Web Ink Now

Building inbound marketing assets are not marketing expenses

I get pushback from many entrepreneurs and business owners as well as CMOs in larger businesses about the idea of using inbound marketing because they see the investment in people to create content as a barrier. They say things like: "I cannot find money in my budget to spend $5,000 a month (or whatever the number) on content creation."

When I probe, the vast majority of these decision makers are looking at content creation in the same way as they look at other marketing expenses they currently have such as advertising, trade show booths, spending on agency retainers, and printing brochures.

Building inbound marketing assets

Thinking of your content as an expense like advertising means you always underspend.

For example, if you spend $5,000 in a given month on Google AdWords, the only thing you are buying are the resulting clicks of your ads appearing against the important phrases people search on to find your business. But as soon as you stop paying, your clicks stop too. This is the classic example of a marketing expense.

However, if you spend $5,000 in a given month to hire a freelance journalist to write a bunch of interesting blog posts relating to important phrases people search on to find your business, you will have assets that live on forever that will drive people to your content from the search engines for years to come. The content will have value many years after it has been paid for.

I started writing this blog in 2004. There are posts that I wrote many years ago that rank highly in the search engines for phrases that people search on today such as "brand journalism" "online media room" and many others.

My free ebooks are an even more dramatic example. I've gotten well over a million downloads from these efforts. Every day people download my ebooks, in some cases many years after I have written them because they enter search terms like "viral marketing" and discover my long ago created content.

Those blog posts and ebooks are assets that I own. It's not a marketing expense because the 500 or so links from Google and the other search engines I get each day are free!

It's not just me. Mike Volpe, CMO at HubSpot, looked at HubSpot sales leads from their blog. It turns out that 70% of all blog leads are from older articles and only 30% of the leads came from articles that they wrote that particular month.

In other words HubSpot blog assets that were already "paid for" in the past represented 70% of HubSpot success. Yet the way most people would calculate ROI is to value the smaller 30% of leads against the marketing spend for that month. This method gives false data.

Time to stop thinking of content creation as an expense

Almost all marketers are looking at an investment in content as a short-term expense instead of a long-term asset.

It is time we educate the decision makers that content creation is asset building. I am such a believer in this that I think we should put our blog or YouTube channel onto our balance sheet in the same way that many companies value patents or brands.

How to value your content assets

There are a number of ways we could actually value our content. None are perfect. Here are a few to get you thinking:

Value of a blog post or ebook using AdWords Value Equivalency

I propose one metric, which I coin as AdWords Value Equivalency, which is sort of similar to the traditional PR metric of Advertising Value Equivalency.

The way to calculate this is to figure out how much you would have to pay for the Google AdWords equivalent of a particular search term that you rank highly for in the natural search results because of the content you have created. Then figure out how often that phrase is searched on and calculate a value for a year (or ten years or in perpetuity).

As an example, HubSpot is currently in the #1 position for "marketing software" (nice!!). And there are also a bunch of companies buying ads against this phrase using Google AdWords. I would argue the value of that phrase as a HubSpot asset is the present value of the maximum AdWords price you have to pay times the number of searches (or the number of clicks). You could figure it out such that a keyword like that could potentially be worth millions of dollars over, say, ten years.

Value of a Twitter follower

Here is an arbitrary way that each Twitter follower is valued. Some time ago the mobile phone site PhoneDog sued a former employee when he left the company, alleging that the employee took as many as 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left. PhoneDog estimated each follower was worth $2.50 and went to court to get the money back.

I know the dollar figure is arbitrary, but take your company's Twitter followers and multiply by $2.50. Again using HubSpot as an example, the asset they have built of 285,000+ @HubSpot twitter followers is theoretically worth more than $700,000.

I'd argue that if HubSpot were to value the company to, say, go public in the coming years that investors would be wise to look at these valuable marketing assets in evaluating the merits of investing in the company.

What about you?

Please add a comment if you are already calculating the value of your marketing assets and let us know how you do it.

Are there any creative types out there who want to build an online tool for my concept of AdWords Value Equivalency?

Disclosure: I am on the HubSpot advisory board and serve as the company’s Marketer in Residence.

What converging mainstream and social media means for marketing and PR

Too many people are still hung up with outdated artificial demarcations between "mainstream media" and "social media", arguing that one is more legitimate. This leads to flawed marketing and PR strategic decisions.

This is especially true of many (but not all) public relations agencies whose reps do their clients a disservice by focusing on one form of media over another.

Nonsense. The distinctions have nearly disappeared. You've got to eliminate your prejudice.

Whenever this subject pops up, I'm prompted to ask some questions:

- What is a blog?
- What is an online news site like Huffington Post?
- What is it when a print newspaper like the New York Times or a television network like the BBC publishes an online news site?
- What is it when readers can post comments to on an online story from a magazine?
- What about when a reporter for the BBC maintains a blog?
- What are the Twitter feeds of New York Times reporters?

Guess what? It's all just real time media!

The Huffington Post is a technically a blog. It is written on the Blogger platform so there is no difference technically when I write for the Huffington Post or when I write on Web Ink Now, my personal blog.

The Huffington Post is a blog, but is one of the most important news sites on the Web with a recent Alexa ranking as I write this of 77, making it in the top 100 of all sites of any kind in the world.

The Huffington Post is a blog, but won the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting for senior military correspondent David Wood's 10-part series about wounded veterans, Beyond the Battlefield.

The BBC is mainstream media, but readers can comment on stories (and thousands do).

The New Yorker is a magazine, but people can share links to stories within the site using widgets for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Tumblr.

What the blurring of mainstream media and social media means for your business

When your buyers search Google or another search engine for information related to your business, they don't really care if the top results come from a "news site" like the BBC, a "blog" like the Huffington Post, or your own content rich Web site. So you need to eliminate the bias.

When buyers ask a question on social media they are happy when someone sends a valuable link to information on the web. They don't scrutinize what’s recommended to them and dismiss the blog content and only read the remainder. They're happy for something that educates and entertains.

The best marketing and PR strategies must include creating your own content, including text, video, and images. It should also include strategies for getting noticed by important voices so they write about you, which comes back to the content you create.

photo credit: DanAllison via photopin cc

The second most important communication revolution in history

I’d like to step way back and look at the big picture of where we are today. To use a cliché, this isn't a "30,000-foot view". Rather it's more like the view from the moon.

Johannes Gutenberg invention of mechanical movable type printing in about 1439 was the most important communications breakthrough in history. It meant books could be mass produced, rather than painstakingly copied by hand. It meant ordinary people could refer to things in books, like laws, that used to have to be committed to memory.

The printing press created the first communications revolution by freeing people from memorizing information which allowed them to use brainpower to create things instead. At the same time, this first communications revolution (which took many decades) meant that large numbers of people became literate, raising living standards along the way.

The second most important communication revolution in history

556 years later, in 1995, the second most important communications revolution took off. I choose 1995 because it was the year Netscape went public on the success of Netscape Navigator the first popular product to allow people easy Internet connections and Web browsing.

I talk about it in this short clip. My friend Chris Brogan pointed out that I ended the clip abruptly. True. The clip was taken from my new speaking highlight reel. The entire video is about 8 minutes and is here if you want to check it out: Marketing and Leadership Speaker David Meerman Scott.

We're fortunate to be living in this time in history. We're actually living through an important revolution.

I figure we're about half way through this second communications revolution. The first 17 years or so were fast paced and things changed very quickly. Adoption went from a few million people online to billions. But things are still changing, as many organizations aren't truly communicating in real-time yet.

You are what you publish

The next few decades will see continuation of the revolution. Are you a supporter of the revolution? Or do you support the old regime?

Do you care more about customers or the competition?

Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook asked Scott Forstall to resign, reportedly because Forstall (who had headed Apple's iOS Software) refused to sign the company's apology over the crappy Apple Maps that were made a part of the latest iPhone software. I'm glad to see that because it signals that Cook cares about customers rather than "beating Google" which as far as I could tell was the only reason to swap out the mapping platform in the iPhone.

Too much focus on the competition

Many companies obsess about the other guys. Why in the world would you name your business Seattle's Best Coffee unless you were directly competing with Seattle, Washington based Starbucks?

My sense is that the various social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the like) are spending way too much time worried about the "competition" and not enough time worrying about their users.

For example, Google worries about Twitter. So Google eliminated the excellent real time search feature which had delivered tweets as part of Google search results. While tweets no longer appear, Google will happily show updates from Google+ in search results.

Who do you care more about – your customers or the competition?

How to use Wikipedia for marketing and PR

Late last week, Alan Smith alerted me via Twitter to a new guide created by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to help public relations professionals understand Wikipedia.

The guide, Wikipedia Best Practice Guidance for Public Relations Professionals, is a free PDF download with no registration required.

This is certainly a subject that interests marketers and PR pros because Wikipedia is among the top ten most visited sites on the Web. When there is a Wikipedia article on a topic that you search on (and there are currently just over 4 million articles in English), I'm sure you’ve noticed that article usually appears as one of the top few results, frequently in the number one position.

Besides the CIPR guide, you might check out my interview with Colin Warwick How to create and edit articles for Wikipedia. Colin, a Product Marketing Manager at Agilent Technologies who writes the popular Signal Integrity blog is my go-to resource for all things Wikipedia.

There have been a number of very public dust ups when companies try to influence a Wikipedia page without following the site's guidelines and policies. For example, this one from Stella Artois beer.

The CIPR guide was created with the help of the wikipedian community - a very smart move.

"The Wikipedia work has been one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever been involved in," says Phil Morgan, Director of Policy and Communications, Chartered Institute of Public Relations . "The process of engagement with the Wikipedia community has been an eye-opener. We set out to build mutual understanding and the outcomes have challenged the assumptions that some within PR hold. No bad thing." Phil also says that the guide is a work in progress and will be updated. There is a meeting of the group of members who worked on the project this evening to discuss sustaining the engagement and they intend to develop future versions of the guidance as things change.

How to use Wikipedia for marketing and PR

The CIPR guide will get you familiar with Wikipedia's philosophies, guidelines and policies. While there are many more details in the guide, as a basic introduction, Wikipedia has three core content policies. It is imperative PR professionals understand these fully. Here is that section from the CIPR Guide:

1. Neutral point of view – All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopaedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias. Fundamentally, where there is a contentious issue associated with a topic, Wikipedia content should be a good reference for the debate. In a few words, neutrality means this: report the debate, don't take part in it.

2. Verifiability – Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth — meaning, in this context, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true.

3. No original research – Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.

Download Wikipedia Best Practice Guidance for Public Relations Professionals for free with no registration.

Look at how far Marketing & PR has come and consider where we are going

In early 1995, while living in Hong Kong, I received a floppy disk copy of Netscape Navigator version 1.0 and with my dial up connection got onto the Web. Being a collector (my family might say “pack rat”) I saved the disk.

I remember that time well because zero percent of my marketing and PR colleagues were online. At the time, nobody was tracking the number of Internet users, but IDC says it grew to 16 million by December 1995.

A few years later I created my first personal site and soon after started sending search engine optimized press releases for lead generation on behalf of NewsEdge, the company I was employed by at the time. Reaching people when they were looking for what we had to offer was like magic.

Marketing and PR today

IDC says there are over 2 billion Internet users in 2012.

Consider what we can do today with a smartphone such as an iPhone, fewer than two decades after Netscape 1.0. We can instantly reach anyone on the planet by creating real-time content such as video. Amazing.

The future

We're making up the rules now for what the future holds. Imagine the progress over the next decade or two? Incredible.

I'm bullish on marketing and public relations in the years to come. Not only is it easier to reach buyers than at any time in the past, it's also more fun.

Obama says his biggest mistake as president has been communication

Yesterday, President and First Lady Michelle Obama spoke with CBS This Morning anchor Charlie Rose in the White House Blue Room, where they discussed the failures and successes of his administration as he heads into another election, among other things.

Rose asked President Obama about his biggest mistake as president.

"When I think about what we've done well and what we haven't done well," the president said, "the mistake of my first term - couple of years - was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that's important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."

Direct link to Obama reflects on his biggest mistake as president on CBS.

After the election in 2008, I wrote a post Ten marketing lessons from the Barack Obama presidential campaign. My number three was: "Clearly and simply articulate what you want people to believe."

It's fascinating that Obama has identified his failures in this area as president. (While the President used the phrase "tell a story" in the interview, I am expanding it to "communicating" in this post.)

While I think he did an excellent job during the 2008 campaign, I certainly agree with the president that he hasn’t done a good enough job communicating over the past three and a half years as president.

Learning from the President Obama's mistake

These lessons are applicable to all. Many companies don't do a good job communicating. They don't focus on buyer personas and use the techniques of brand journalism and content marketing to tell a story.

Or, like the president, CEOs communicate during a product launch to make sales (the election cycle in Obama's case) but not once the product is released and used by customers.

Unlike the President however, many CEOs don't recognize this as a failure. Often, the people at the top think a good product is enough.

What can your organization learn from the President's mistake?

Note: This is a marketing blog, not a political blog. These are not political observations, but thoughts about marketing and communications.

The pay phone business and looking to your future

This morning I noticed this headline New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots. I thought it was cool so I tweeted it at 2:51 am EDT. Very quickly more than twenty people retweeted and added their comments. It seems the idea of turning the old pay phone infrastructure into a modern use interested many people.

Looking to the future

The idea of reusing old infrastructure got me thinking. In my town, there is a bike and jogging path called Minuteman Bikeway. The old train line from the Western suburbs to the center of Boston was converted to a new rails-to-trails use. Like the old pay phones converted to wi-fi hotspots, old railway rights of way are now re-used to become wonderful exercise spots.

Clinging to the past

But think about how many organizations cling to outdated technology and business models.

Also near where I live is the old Polaroid facility in Waltham, MA. A few days ago I shot this photo of the site, a sad visual reminder of what happens to once great companies that cling to old technology.

Polaroid was the leader in instant photography but missed the digital instant photography revolution and on October 11, 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Polaroid brand name - purchased as part of the reorganization - lives on, but the once great company does not. It didn't have to be that way had management looked over the horizon.

What about your business?

Are you looking to what’s new? Or living upon past successes?

LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter says HubSpot study

I'm presenting at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event today - April 17, 2012 - in Mumbai, India.

A few weeks ago as I was preparing my talk, I asked my friends at HubSpot if they had any data on the effectiveness of LinkedIn that I could share with my audience. Rebecca Corliss came through with some awesome new data which I am releasing for the first time here.

In a study of 3,128 HubSpot B2B customers, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.60%, four times higher than Twitter (.67%) and seven times better than Facebook (.39%).

The methodology was a data dump of all of HubSpot customers' social media traffic and leads collected through the HubSpot system in 2011. From there, data was segmented to look at B2B companies that had generated visits and leads from social media. Companies that generated less than two leads in the year were excluded from the sample.

Lead generation with LinkedIn

This data clearly shows that LinkedIn is a good lead source. But few B2B companies use LinkedIn to its full potential.

To help you, HubSpot has published a free ebook Learning LinkedIn From the Experts: How to Build a Powerful Business Presence on LinkedIn. In it, five LinkedIn specialists provide insight into how you can use LinkedIn to successfully grow your network and business. Or just check out the HubSpot LinkedIn company page to see the potential of what LinkedIn can do.

Disclosures: I am on the HubSpot board of advisors and I serve as Marketer in Residence for the company. I am being paid to speak at the LinkedIn #B2BConnect 2012 event.

Will Facebook destroy Instagram?

I've talked before about why I love Instagram.

Instagram is a photo sharing application that makes it easy and fun to manipulate a photo with various filters and turn it into instant art. Then with a few clicks, you can share your photo with a caption via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.

For example, a few days ago in Krakow, Poland I shot a mundane photo of some telephone booths with my iPhone and used Instagram to turn it into instant art.

Yesterday, Facebook announced a USD $1 billion acquisition of Instagram.

You can read the Facebook statement here.

I hope Facebook will not destroy Instagram

But I'm worried they will.

It seems to me that the big social players – Google, Facebook, and Twitter – are building walled gardens around their users in the exact same way that portals like Lycos, Excite, AOL, and Yahoo did a decade ago.

They hoard users and don't like to have hooks into each others' services.

Yes, I do understand that companies need to make money. I get that. Instagram's founders, employees, and investors deserve a payday.

How are Lycos, Excite, AOL, and Yahoo faring today??!!

Building walled gardens of Portal 2.0 is bad for users and ultimately leads to failure.

Here's more on this idea: Portal 2.0 take social backwards to the 1990s.

While the Zuck's statement says things won't change, I'm pessimistic.

• I can imagine a day in the near future when you can no longer post Instagram directly to Twitter.


• I'm also seeing a future where we are forced into the Facebook mobile app to use Instagram.


• Or perhaps, just like Google not playing nice with Twitter, you won't be able to access Instagram from other social sites.

Read the Zuck's statement. Has he earned your trust? Do you believe him? Or if you are an Instagram fanboy like me are you worried too?

My friend Ann Handley introduced me to Instagram. So went over to Ann's Twitter to see her take. "I love what she said: For many fans of Instagram, the news that Facebook is acquiring the photo-sharing mobile platform is a little like hearing that your best friend is engaged to that jerk. She might be thrilled. But you can’t help but feel a sense of doom about the whole arrangement." Here is Ann's thoughtful post.

What do you think? Are you worried like me and Ann? Or are we missing something?

Photo: Shot by David Meerman Scott near Krakow, Poland on an iPhone 4S and tweaked with Instagram. CC