Tag Archives: content strategy

4 ways to monetize your content curation

By Aaron Hoos on October 24, 2012 in Business

There is a ton of content on the web and it’s almost overwhelming for people to find the most useful stuff. So curation is becoming increasingly important to help people make sense of it all. (Check out my recent blog post on how to curate).

But can you make money as a curator?

Here are a few ways to monetize curation (although not all of them are commonly used right now).

  • Advertising: One of the most obvious and common ways is to make money from ads people click when they’re visiting your website (i.e. AdSense or Amazon).
  • Free curation as a positioning effort: In this method, your business is to make money from something else (i.e. consulting, coaching, content creation) but you use curation as a way to help position you as an expert. This is pretty common today.
  • Gate keeping: This is where you curate content but charge a fee for people to see your curation. It might be a monthly subscription or an ebook-style one-time purchase. You really need to prove your skills as a taste-maker first to get people to trust you enough to pay for your curation. Of the methods I’m listing today, this is the least-used way that I’ve seen but we could see it increase in time as curation proves to be more valuable.
  • Help others curate: This is the business model of Scoop.it and I think it is a big growth opportunity right now. With this business model, you get paid (through subscriptions or perhaps based on some other metric) to offer up preliminary curation so that other people can further curate.

How to curate content: The best ideas, resources, and tools

By Aaron Hoos on October 23, 2012 in Business

Have you ever walked into a restaurant and been unsure what to order because there are so many options? People can become overwhelmed by choice to the point where they cannot easily make decisions or act.

A similar thing is happening on the web today. There is so much content out there on the web, and even more is pouring in daily. (I should know… I’m writing a bunch of it). People aren’t searching anymore, because it’s so easy to find information on something. Instead, they are trying to make sense of it all. That’s a big difference.

Enter content curation. This is where people take the content that is already out there and pull it together to help people make sense of the information. It’s a science as well as an art, and you shouldn’t think of it as simply just putting up a list of links. Curation requires more.

Different sites are approaching content curation in different ways: Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm and in a way, they are very much in the content curation business. Squidoo is Seth Godin’s early take on content curation. Twitter offers a type of real-time content curation. Pinterest is a type of visually-oriented content curation. Facebook (at least among my friends) seems to be turning into an exclusive meta-curation club. Scoop.it has built a hub to help people curate and share.

Just to clear the air for those of us who see ourselves as content creators: I think there is still room for that. Curating is like only being allowed to marry your cousin. Eventually you’ll need new blood or everyone will be walking around your family compound with three arms. Even the guy from curation website Storify thinks that creators are still going to be valuable in the future.

So how do you curate content? Well, I’ve curated a list on exactly that topic:

First of all, you should download and read Seth Godin’s ebook Everyone Is An Expert. This ebook is written in 2005 so it predates a lot of the curation tools out there but, in classic Seth Godin form, he was talking about curation long before anyone else was. Check out the book and read the first 18 pages. (After that, he launches into a bit of a pitch for Squidoo, which you might want to read but can safely skip).

Once you’ve done that, watch this video. Although the video’s presentation is a little dry, they go through a very valuable step-by-step overview of content curation. In other words, reading the first 18 pages of Godin’s ebook and then watching this video gives you probably the best “crash course” in content curation.

Next, read this “content curation 101″ blog post by Beth Kanter, which is one of the best examples of content curation I’ve seen. Beth explains what content curation is and why we need it (which you’ve already read) and then she describes how to do it well. Great stuff from Beth! Beth mentions in her blog post an excellent article from ClickZ that I think is worth highlighting again — How to become a content curation king. This article’s real value is down at the very bottom, where the author provides 9 very helpful tips on how to curate content effectively.

And check out this excellent article from WebbyThoughts about the 5 different types of content curation and how to excel with each of them. (Plus the article has some great tips and tools for content curators!)

Curation gives you some valuable benefits as a business owner:

  • There SEO benefits of content curation
  • Curation relieves the pressure of having to develop something new
  • Curation establishes you in the higher-order role of taste-making evaluator rather than someone who constantly pushed out content
  • You can monetize your curated content (I’m going to write a separate blog post about this tomorrow

Be sure to also read this article from Forbes — 4 reasons why content curation has gone mainstream.

Even if you don’t want to switch over entirely from being a content creator to a content curator, you can dial in a bit of curation into the work you are doing now, to change things up and to experiment with this new-to-you approach.

There are a bunch of tools to help you curate content. Check out these articles that list some curation tools:

3 ways to earn passive income through content-creation

By Aaron Hoos on February 17, 2011 in Business

A few days ago, I posted 2 blog posts about moving your business toward a passive model — one in which you maximize your return while you minimize your effort. In those posts, I outlined the key business functions which CAN demand a lot of time and attention, but which entrepreneurs should try to make passive. Those business functions are Administration, Marketing, and Deliverables. You can read the 2 blog posts here: How to be a lazy entrepreneur (part 1) and How to be a lazy entrepreneur (part 2).

If you are building a sales funnel for a new business or optimizing a sales funnel for an existing business, you are probably thinking about ways that you can generate income by converting prospects into customers. Your choices are active deliverables and passive ones.

  • Active deliverables require you to put in some time to fulfill the order — an active product might require that you manufacture it, package it, and ship it; an active service might require that you do research, perform the service, and send it to the customer.
  • Passive deliverables are ideal because they allow you to earn an income without doing a lot of active work for each sale. Passive deliverables can be more profitable because it allows you to spend more time filling your sales funnel and nurturing contacts through your sales funnel, and less time on the deliverable component.

If you are thinking about the ways to earn passive income, there are three that you can mix and match for your business: Ads, Affiliates, and Assets.

Ads: This is where you create content and embed ads into your content. This earns you income (usually per-click, although there other payment models). Google AdSense is an easy way to get started.

Affiliates: This is where you create content and link to products or services via an affiliate link. When someone clicks through your link and then buys that product or service, you will earn money (often a flat fee or percentage). Amazon is a nice starting point but there are many options here.

Assets: This is where you create content and then sell that content for money through various methods, such as ebooks, podcasts, subscriptions, books, magazines, etc. Clickbank or Lulu are great ways to get started selling assets.

The key to success in all three is creating highly-targeted, compelling content that correctly identifies the problems, needs, and interests of your target market and then positions the deliverable (the ad, affiliate, or asset) as the solution the problem.

Why sales funnel strategy is going to be a big trend in 2011

By Aaron Hoos on January 3, 2011 in Business

In the past decade (plus a little bit), the internet has created a universe of opportunity for new and old businesses to become marketing machines. This has been good… but it has also been bad.

In pre-internet days, businesses would think up some marketing ideas, have them created by professionals, and rely on more traditional methodologies to get the word out: Flyers were mailed; coupons were handed out; advertisements were published. These efforts were expensive, time consuming, and usually required the skills of an outside expert (to design and/or to publish).

Now, anyone can start a business and any business owner can drive traffic to their site using a variety of web-based marketing activities (like blogging or article-writing) and techniques (like SEO). They can do it themselves quickly and affordably.

This is advantageous — because it blows the doors wide open for anyone to become an entrepreneur — it has also had some nasty repercussions:

PROBLEM 1: MAKING IT UP ON VOLUME
Do-it-yourself marketing has led to entrepreneurs trading quality for quantity and spamming search engines and inboxes and Twitter streams with volumes of content. Even businesses that market legitimately (that is, they don’t spam. Rather, they create quality content that adds value for the reader) need to achieve a certain quantity of marketing to get the job done.

PROBLEM 2: MARKETING THAT DOESN’T KEEP UP WITH THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS
On top of volume is another reality that people don’t realize: Businesses change and markets change but content posted online can outlive those changes. So if you create a series of articles and point those articles to a page on your site, then take that page down, those articles no longer provide the benefit they once offered. (I’m definitely guilty of this one!)

PROBLEM 3: NEW OPPORTUNITIES ARRIVING DAILY
There’s a third factor in this new reality of “DIY marketing”. New marketing techniques crop up almost daily. When I started writing (nearly two decades ago) the internet wasn’t on my radar. It wasn’t on very many people’s radar at all! Then, over the years, the web arrived and along came new ideas about how to market your business: Websites then ebooks then blogs then articles… Heck, just a few years ago, no one had heard of Twitter. Now it is THE darling of social media. It seems like a new way of marketing your business is arriving daily.

THE RESULT?
You can probably imagine what happens when you combine these three things together: A “requirement” of quantity + an ever-changing business environment + a constant flood of new marketing opportunities = An over-abundance of marketing is published and it is helpful for a brief season, but then it ceases to be helpful.

What is needed is sales funnel strategy to solve the problem: Businesses need to take one more step before they start flooding the web with marketing. (Or, if they have already started, they need to pause and revisit their strategy). In doing so, businesses will find that they will spend less on marketing but quickly achieve a more profitable result.

Sales funnel strategy will reduce the need for a volume of work and will actually make a lesser quantity of marketing content more effective. Sales funnel strategy will remain effective for longer than marketing that wasn’t applied to any sort of strategy, helping businesses stay competitive even though they are evolving. And, Sales funnel strategy will help businesses discern which marketing opportunities are right for them and which ones are unnecessary wastes of time.

TRENDING: SALES FUNNEL STRATEGY
Because of the economy being what it is (and what it was just a year or two ago), I think businesses are looking to cut back on expenses but increase the effectiveness of, well, everything they do. On top of that, I suspect that entrepreneurs are getting tired of having to race from one marketing technique to another just because everyone else is doing it. Entrepreneurs want to get back to basics and work on the parts of their business that can generate results.

So sales funnels and sales funnel strategy will increase in importance in the year(s) to come as businesses pull back from the frenetic pace that once was a DIY requirement.

How to hire the best ghostwriter for your content (and what you should REALLY look for)

By Aaron Hoos on December 3, 2010 in Business

Businesses need content to sell their products or services: They need marketing material, web content, sales scripts, instruction manuals… and sometimes they need content written which will actually be the product sold (as in the case of ebooks).

Not everyone can write or wants to write, and that’s where a ghostwriter comes in. Ghostwriters are hired by the business to create content that is attributed to the business rather than the writer. It’s a very common practice in writing.

HERE’S THE PROBLEM
When businesses look for ghostwriters, they don’t always know what to look for. Sure, they look for someone with experience as a writer — preferably with experience in a specific industry or with a specific content type — but beyond that, there are just question marks.

Over the years I’ve worked as a ghostwriter for hundreds of clients and I can tell you that each client comes to the table with a different set of ideas and expectations.

If you need to hire a ghostwriter, here’s what you need to know:

THE FIVE ROLES OF CONTENT CREATION
All written work (regardless of what kind of content you want) is put together by five different roles. These roles can be performed by one person or by more than one person. The roles (in order) are:

  1. The thinker — The thinker comes up with the clever ideas and catchy elements; they perform content strategy; they consider the audience and the value the audience is seeking; and they solidify the concepts into a workable shape.
  2. The researcher — The researcher looks at what the market is looking for and how it’s communicating its needs; they look at the competition and what is already on offer; and they look for opportunities (including SEO, marketing messages, etc.).
  3. The scribe — The scribe takes the ideas from the thinker and the research from the researcher and they write it out; they massage the ideas, if necessary, to create a powerful and focused piece of content.
  4. The editor — The editor reviews what the scribe has created and makes sure it is aligned with the thinker’s vision and the researcher’s findings; they ensure coherence within the document and between the working document and other content produced by the business.
  5. The publisher — The publisher makes the content available to the target audience. It could be as simple as copying the text and pasting it into a blog publishing platform, or it could be more complex like printing and binding a book and setting up distribution.

Businesses who hire ghostwriters often bring need one or more of the roles mentioned above, but they don’t always effectively communicate that need.

If you’re a business looking to hire a ghostwriter, look at the five roles above and figure out what you already have and what you need. Then look for a ghostwriter who can perform the roles that you need. You might look for them in a single person or you might assemble a team, depending on the size of your budget and the scope of your project and the skills of your team.

EXAMPLES FROM MY EXPERIENCE
I’ve worked with several clients who have simply said, “I’m starting a business and I want to position myself as an expert. Can you create for me an ebook, sales letter, marketing material, and other sales funnel supporting content?”. These clients hired me to think, research, write, edit, and sometimes even publish their work.

I’ve worked with several clients who have said, “I’ve made a name for myself as an expert in my niche. Here is my content, research, and experience. I’ve got the system in place to take the content you write and sell it.” These clients hired me to be the scribe and editor, and they’ve taken care of the thinking, research, and publishing.

WHY THIS MATTERS
For business owners, knowing exactly what kind of roles you’re looking for in a ghostwriter will help you in the following ways:

  • You’ll be able to better manage the project and your budget
  • You’ll be able to find a ghostwriter faster and more easily
  • You’ll be able to find a ghostwriter who fits your needs
  • You’ll be able to communicate more effectively with your ghostwriter
  • You’ll end up with a project that is closest to your vision and will help you to achieve your business goals

So the next time you’re looking for a ghostwriter, remember: You’re not JUST looking for a ghostwriter. Be specific about the roles you want your ghostwriter to take on.

Online reputation management: How to clean up or eliminate unfavorable search results

By Aaron Hoos on November 16, 2010 in Business

No matter how good your business is, you’re bound to get some bad press at some point. It’s a part of business but wouldn’t be so bad… if it didn’t appear on the first page of a Google search result! Somehow, bad news or reviews seem magnetized to the very top of search results, and they remain stuck there as an obstacle to a fast-flowing sales funnel!

I’ve worked with several businesses and individuals who have bad press from their past lurking in Google search results, and we’ve rolled up our sleeves and dug in, trying to take back ownership of their reputation by taking back ownership of their top Google results. Here is the advice that I give them:

You essentially have 2 options:

  • You can talk louder and more often than the bad news or reviews
  • You can change the story completely

Both will take time and investment (sorry). I have seen both work and can’t say which one is better, although I suspect that the “better” one has to do with how quickly you need the content removed from search results about you and how flexible your prospects and customers are.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT OPTION ONE: TALK LOUDER AND MORE OFTEN
If you have some annoying news or reviews that aren’t budging from your Google search results, you will need to get more aggressive by talking louder and more often.

Identify the keyword that is the problem. Is it your name or your business’ name? Be certain that it’s the keywords that people are actually Googling to get to you. (If your name is Bob Smith but you have earned bunch of bad reviews about “Robert Smith” that don’t even show up when someone searches for you, then forget about trying to manage it… it’s not disrupting your sales funnel unless your contacts find it in some other way). But if it’s your name (or business name) that is causing the problem, and bad news is showing up on that word when people Google you, here’s how to talk louder and more often:

Own the word: Make sure you own the domain name of that keyword. If you can think of a few different websites, consider buying related domain names. For example, I might own AaronHoos.com, AaronHoos-publishing.com, AaronHoos-writing.com, AaronHoos-speaking.com, AaronHoos-consulting.com, etc., or AaronHoos.net, AaronHoos.org, AaronHoos.info, etc. You can’t just copy and paste the content from one site to another and you should endeavor to keep each site fresh. At the very least, start with one site that is exclusively your name or your business’ name, if at all possible.

Start a blog: Start a blog with that name in the URL. Blogger and Posterous are my favorites but there are several others. If you can manage content across all of them, then start a blog at several of them. (Make it easy on yourself by assigning a function to each blog. Maybe one blog is just a quick blog about books you’re reading and every blog post features another book. Maybe another blog is for casual posts about what’s going on in your life, and it’s tied to Flickr and Last.fm and Foursquare. Maybe another blog is your professional blog. Maybe another blog is where you post your favorite videos. Again, make sure your name is in the URLs: aaronhoos.blogspot.com and aaronhoos.posterous.com, for example.

Get social: Open a Twitter account. Use your name as the Twitter ID. Create a personal Facebook page and a business Facebook page. Change the URLs to your name. Create a LinkedIn profile and business profile (if applicable) and change the URLs to your name. Create a Foursquare page. Find other social media relevant to your niche and do the same. Get active on those sites… and own your name at each site AND make sure your privacy settings allow for being crawled by search engines and published to the web.

Post content at offsite content channels: Find 5 or more article publishing or distribution sites and get actively writing and publishing articles there. Use a combination of article distribution sites (ArticlesBase.com, Isnare.com, EzineArticles.com, etc.) and article publishing sites (Squidoo.com, HubPages.com, Suite101.com, Technorati.com, etc.)

Post news: Find an online news site that caters to your niche market and report the news in your industry or niche category.

Make your own news: Write a report – just something smallish like a 5-page PDF – and then write a series of press releases. Publish them at press release sites (and consider spending the $300+/- for a press release at PRWeb.com). Host the PDF on your site (where search engines can crawl it) but submit it to PDF search engines and ebook sites. (Scribd.com is my favorite).

Create profiles: There are several sites that allow you to create and/or manage a professional profile about yourself. They have various functions but include some of the following: GoogleProfiles, Twellow, PeoplePond, DandyID, just to name a few.

Post your resume: Create an online resume at resume sites. Depending on your industry, there might be industry-relevant sites that allow you to create a portfolio page. For a broad range of services, Guru and Elance are good examples.

And remember, the key here is to always use your name or business name (whatever the critical keyword is whose reputation you’re trying to “clean up” in Google) prominently – in the URL, the page title, subtitles, and content.

Once you’ve done all (or a majority) of these, you need to manage them: Cross link them, push RSS feeds from one to another, refresh your content, and add new content. Obviously it’s too much for anyone to do in a day or even a week, but it is manageable if you plan to write a blog every day, an article every week, a series of website refreshes every two weeks, and an update your profiles every month. Not everything has to change all the time but a good cross section of it should be refreshed regularly so that there is always something new being posted somewhere. In my opinion, there is no such thing as too much. If you can produce content – a lot of content – and that content is high quality and consistent, you will eventually claw back your reputation.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT OPTION TWO: CHANGE THE STORY
If the above list of opportunities is too much time or effort, or if you have to move quickly and aren’t afraid of shedding a few of your prospects or clients along the way, simply change the story. Find a new, related keyword that you can use and start marketing with that one aggressively.

If you are Bob Smith and there is some bad press out there, start marketing yourself as Rob Smith, for example. If you don’t have a name you can shorten (like Aaron), switch to your initials or even a pen name or professional name. Lots of people use pen names or professional names, and not just for reputation management. If you are “Fast Web Designs,” change your name to something else and aim for another related keyword… “Quick Website Builders”.

SUMMARY AND ADDITIONAL RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT TIPS
The internet gives entrepreneurs an advantage and a disadvantage: The advantage is rapid deployment of marketing to quickly build and fill sales funnels with contacts. The disadvantage is rapid spread of news and reviews (which tends to more likely to be bad than good). Like any other asset, your online reputation needs to be monitored and managed carefully. And if you ever find bad news and reviews creeping onto the search results for your business, you can talk louder and more often or you can change the story.

Aaron’s Answers: How does it all work together?

By Aaron Hoos on November 5, 2010 in Portfolio

“There are lots of different things you can do online… When do you use them and how do they all work together?”

I’ve had three people ask me that same question recently so I thought the topic deserved its own blog post! The people who asked me were a realtor, the owner of a bacon factory (I’m not kidding), and a trainer/educator at my client’s office.

Here’s my answer to them (but slightly generalized for everyone). Now, I should clarify a something first: This isn’t the only way to piece your content channels together, and you can certainly add or take away as necessary. I’m just outlining the basics for someone who wants to get started. I’ve seen this work effectively for all kinds of different businesses.

OVERVIEW
You want to have several different content channels because each one acts as a sort-of “interface” with your prospective market and each one has its own purpose in your sales funnel.

START WITH A WEBSITE
Create a central place to drive your traffic. This site can be fairly static (i.e. you can update the content but you don’t have to do it daily). It should be the place where prospects ultimately go to convert into customers. This can be a somewhat salesy site and acts very much like a brochure and salesperson.

NEXT START A BLOG
Now you need something to showcase just how smart you are while it also works as a search engine optimized magnet of readers. Update your blog regularly — perhaps once a day or a couple times a week.

THEN OPEN AN ACCOUNT ON TWITTER
Open a Twitter account. Tweet daily. Follow your prospects. Listen to them and communicate with them.

THEN CREATE A FACEBOOK PAGE
Create a Facebook business page for your business or brand. Start sharing information about your business. Engage fans. Post pictures and video. Start discussions.

NOW TIE IT ALL TOGETHER
Once you have all four of these content channels created, it’s time to tie them together. Here’s what you might consider:

  1. Put a link on your blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page pointing to your website.
  2. Connect your blog to your Twitter account so you send out an automatic tweet every time you publish a blogpost.
  3. Connect your blog and your Twitter account to your Facebook page so that you gather all of your communication points into your Facebook interface.

Now you have four very different content channels that work together to bring in leads, turn them into prospects, and ultimately into customers. They work together to capture the attention of leads and to convince prospects to buy. In most cases, your blog and your Twitter account will capture their attention. Then your Facebook page and your blog and your Twitter account will slowly convince them that you are the right vendor for their needs. Then your website will provide the way for them to buy from you. (That doesn’t mean they’ll visit your content channels in the exact order I’ve described — they might hop around — but I believe those are the roles that each content channel plays in your sales funnel).

And you can build from here: Maybe you serve a business niche so you want to add LinkedIn. Or maybe there’s a forum where you can post links to some of your sites. Or maybe you serve a local market and want to use Foursquare as a way to get some location-based marketing.

But don’t get too carried away too early. Start with the four I’ve described and build from there!

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