Content Marketing

13 Blogs and Resources for Content Marketers and PR Pros

December 28, 2018 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

A large part of professional success comes from a curiosity to learn more and a resilience to constantly adapt to the ever-changing landscape of our tech tools.

Whether you’re working in-house and needing further training than your company offers, or you’re a solopreneur needing resources to stay on top of your game, there is a well of great blogs and resources online to keep content marketers and PR pros in the know.

These 13 websites come highly recommended by our #ContentChat community. Check them out for yourself, and comment below if you have others you’d add. [Read more…] about 13 Blogs and Resources for Content Marketers and PR Pros

See You in Cleveland

May 30, 2018 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

I recently had the honor of being the special guest for the Content Marketing Institute’s #CMworld Twitter chat. We were talking about how social media guidelines can help you increase employee brand advocacy, rather than squelch employee social sharing. (If you missed the chat, check out the Twitter Moment recap for conversation highlights.)

It was so much fun catching up with many of the now familiar faces I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the weekly hashtag gathering, many of whom I’ve also gotten to meet in person at the event in Cleveland each September.

Shortly after the chat, I noticed something else I look forward to each year has already started: “See you in Cleveland.” While #CMworld doesn’t have a secret handshake, we do have our own subliminal message: See you in Cleveland. We say this to each other as a mantra. As a promise. As a warding off of evil.

See you in Cleveland.

We repeat this to each other on Twitter and Facebook, and it’s such a simple but powerful expression of friendship.

You see, #CMworld is more than a hashtag or a huge, informative conference packed full of content nerds (although it is all of those things too).

#CMworld is a community. Nurtured by the CMI staff for years and protected by my friend and amazing community manager Monina Wagner, #CMworld is my content marketing family, as it is for so many other content geeks.

This is why I smile every time I get a social message that ends with “See you in Cleveland.” It’s a reminder that however lonely it may be as a solopreneur building my own content marketing consultancy, I have my #CMwrold community of friends right there with me along the way.

See you in Cleveland?

P.S. I’m speaking on Friday, September 7 at 8:00 a.m., presenting “Your Lack of Social Media Guidelines is Killing Your Employee Brand Advocacy.” I’d love to see you there—register and use my affiliate code HEALD to take $100 off the registration price. Prices go up at the end of this month so you’ll want to register soon. Hope to see you in Cleveland.

How Employee Advocates Can Improve Your Content Marketing Results

October 19, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Your most engaged employees are the ones most likely to raise their hands to become employee advocates. They’re also likely to be your most prolific referrers of job candidates. They’re committed to the success of your company, and willing to pitch in to help corporate efforts whenever they can. This makes them ideal partners for expanding the reach of your content marketing efforts.

Getting Employees Involved with Your Content Marketing

To initially get your employee advocates involved with your content marketing, create an employee content curation and sharing program. Ideally, you can integrate this into your existing employee advocacy platform. But, you can also do this by simply sending out regular email roundups with click-to-share links. Then, once budget allows, you can create a more formal program that involves gamification with an online employee advocacy portal.

The best tools to use to implement your employee advocacy program vary depending upon your objectives and what other brand advocacy programs you may need to implement. You have two different types of platforms to choose from:

A brand advocacy tool like Influitive for both internal and external advocates
An employee-only advocacy and social sharing platform like PostBeyond, Spredfast, or Bambu by Sprout

Hello Content Marketing World 2017!

September 4, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

As I write this post, I’m sitting on a plane from San Francisco to Cleveland for the 2017 Content Marketing World conference a.k.a. CMworld.

Believe it or not, this is my fifth consecutive year making the trek from the City by the Bay to Cleveland for this event. No other conference I’ve attended even comes close to that!

So what keeps me coming back to #CMworld, year-after-year? It’s the people and the unrivaled opportunity to hear from the smartest minds in my profession all under one roof.

I’ve met so many amazing colleagues and friends thanks to this event. At this point, even as a shy introvert, I can easily count on a hundred or so people I am personally excited to see and give a hug to over the next few days.

And that’s saying something!

This year, I’m privileged to be speaking on a panel with a group of awesome content marketers I met through the #CMworld weekly Twitter chat and bonded with during last year’s in-person event. We’re going to be sharing our perspective on the intersection of content and community, and we’re leaving plenty of time to answer YOUR questions. I hope I see some of you there on Thursday!

If you’ve been considering attending CMworld in the past but haven’t gotten around to it, I can’t encourage you to do so enough. I’ve paid for this conference and the travel out of pocket. I’ve used precious vacation days to attend. And it’s always been worth it.

Isn’t it time you invested in yourself?

5 Elements to Include in Your Employee Onboarding Program to Encourage Employee Brand Advocacy

April 15, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Is your employee brand advocacy program meeting your goals? Or are you finding it to be a challenge to widen your range of engagement? Are you sure that your employees know that you want them to regularly share company news through social?

You may think that your intentions are clear when it comes to encouraging employee social engagement. But one of the most common obstacles that businesses are facing is hesitation from employees. They don’t know what exactly they should be sharing, and they’re afraid of sharing something that gets them into trouble. Don’t just take my word for it—take a look at the recent research from Bambu by Sprout.

So how do you ensure employees know that you want them to share work-related content on social? You need to tell them it’s OK to do so. That’s a message to repeat early and often—starting with employee onboarding. Include an employee brand advocacy module in every new employee onboarding training plan. This helps you connect with enthusiastic new recruits as they start their journey with your company. It’s a great opportunity to give them the tools and guidance they need to fuel comfortable with advocating on behalf of your brand.

Although there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for employee brand advocacy during onboarding, I recommend including the following elements:

1. An introduction to the brand’s social channels

At Anaplan, we included an employee brand advocacy component in our new hire orientations. This included a tour of the company’s official social media channels. The session facilitator encouraged the new recruits to accompany the presentation online and follow the social channels as we walked through them. We tapped our social media manager or one of our engaged employee advocates for this session, to bring it to life.

Additionally, we gave concrete examples of the sort of employee advocacy activities the company was looking to encourage. For example, following the company’s LinkedIn page and twitter account to keep informed of corporate news and marketing activities, and liking or sharing content.

If you have multiple brand channels on a social network, such as having dedicated recruiting or customer service handles on twitter, this is a good time to explain the different strategies and owners for these channels. Do company employees use special hashtags to define themselves or for tagging life at the office posts? Be sure to let the newbies in on them.

If time allows, also consider including some social media best practices or gamification based upon recent employee online interactions.

We often assume that everyone we hire has experience navigating social media conversations, but that’s not necessarily the case. Put together a packet with a few brief tip sheets or tutorials to give your new hires information they can use to conduct themselves in the best professional light.

How to Create a Content Distribution Process to Improve Your Content Marketing Results

October 27, 2016 by Erika Heald 2 Comments

One of the great things about using an editorial management platform like Kapost to manage your editorial process is it makes it easy to create and execute against a consistent, comprehensive content development and distribution process.

I know that I’ve already given some of you hives by sharing my excitement over the ability to easily create and manage a process. But it’s not a process for process’ sake! I promise.

A solid content distribution plan can be the difference between content that finds its ideal audience and delivers on its intended business results and content that gathers cobwebs on the darkest corner of your website’s resource center. [Read more…] about How to Create a Content Distribution Process to Improve Your Content Marketing Results

Content Marketing

See you in Cleveland.

Getting Employees Involved with Your Content Marketing

1. An introduction to the brand’s social channels

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