Is This the Secret to Going from a Good Writer to a Great One?

You don’t have to look far to find advice on the fundamentals of writing.

A benefit for new writers, no doubt.

Unfortunately, those of us who have been around the block often know every intimate detail about that advice.

In fact, not only do we know it… we’ve memorized it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the landscape changed every year and all a writer had to do to go from good to great was to simply stay current.

But it’s not the way it works. Fundamentals never change.

 

And while the usual advice on the basics of writing are fine for the newbies in the field [and important for seasoned writers to revisit periodically]. . . what about the rest of us?

What about those who want to go from undergraduate to graduate work?

Who want to inject a tangible and seductive element in their writing that growls “You better take notice of me”?

What’s the best way to accomplish that?

And why?

As you might guess, I have an answer.

How I discovered this secret

Not long ago I had the opportunity to work as the managing editor for an international non-profit content publisher.

I was hired to do one thing: elevate the level of writing.

This would be a better story if I could tell you that the writers in my stable were a rag-tag band of sloppy hacks who couldn’t write their way out of a wet brown bag, and in just one year they became the darlings of the publishing world because of my sweet but firm guidance.

But it didn’t happen that way.

For starters, they had their act together. All of them had previous experience in communication, public relations or advertising. So they understood how to write.

They just needed somebody to jolt them to the next level.

The “great” level.

One of the first things I did in my new position was to set a goal: I would train each writer so that in two years he or she could go and work at any world-renowned magazine if they wanted to.

Wired. Reader’s Digest. The National Review.

But that’s not easy. You know why? You need to be honest with writers …

You need to be honest when they are good. And you need to be honest when they are bad.

You need to be able to build a relationship dense with trust that allows you to lean over your desk at a particular time to say, “You know, sorry to say this, but that’s lame.”

Dealt with writers before?

Then you know the sensitivity needed to pull something like that off.

Fortunately, those who I worked with were more than gracious and never threw my advice back in my face. At times they were bold enough to kick back when they felt like their work was defensible.

I encouraged that.

Listen: writing is NOT just about putting a great idea on paper. It’s also about fighting for that idea when people think it stinks.

Tooth and nail if you need to.

And it’s in that dynamic I realized — when a coach is thoughtfully brutal with a writer — that a writer will start to elevate up and out of the domain of “just good” into the space known as “great.”

Of course, the coach needs to be worth his salt. If he’s not, he will only hurt a writer.

But a good writing coach knows how to be kind when it’s appropriate and when to be brutal when it’s proper.

Want an example of the kind of damage that glossing over brutal facts can have on a person’s development? Just look at American Idol.

The fatal consequence of misguided advice

Like a blazing wreckage we rubberneck on the highway, we can’t get enough of those “singers” on AI who clearly have no talent, but have been duped by misguided parents who told them all their life, “You have a great voice!”

The sad thing is the parents knew they were lying.

Lying to someone about their talent is wrong because it’s destructive. It stunts a person’s growth and doesn’t give them the feedback they need to grow.

That’s why a good coach will tell his student — whether he’s a singer or writer — the truth. He’ll take the time to assess someone’s skills, and then give feedback.

And it’s in that relationship that a writer can go from good to great. Take Kacie Campbell, for example, one of the writers I mentored. I think she gets it:

It’s hard to say when I realized that Demian Farnworth was such a great teacher. He always let me feel as if I was learning it on my own, but somewhere along the way I realized it was really him all along!

Through workshops, personal coaching, recommended readings and sometimes encouraging me to rewrite, I have become a much better writer. Once he even wrote “lame” on all of the subheads in my article.

That’s what I needed to hear and somehow he knew when it was appropriate to say that and when it was not.

He’s really great at knowing people’s strengths. He also takes time to figure out the best way to communicate to you, because it’s not the same with everyone. He’ll do whatever it takes to draw out the best writer in you, because we don’t all write the same.

I had the education and a raw form of writing that I enjoyed very much, but I must say that Demian has helped me smooth the rough edges and has helped me have an even stronger voice in my writing. For that I will always be grateful!

She’s now traveling the globe writing high-profile pieces. Pieces that demand attention and strike a chord with readers.

Where I’m going with this

My whole point is that it’s not easy for writers to develop that sort of proficiency on their own. Some need a coach with courage who will be thoughtfully honest with them when it comes to constructive criticism.

A coach who will challenge them. Fight them. Refine them.

Who will teach them to pour themselves into everything they write — holding nothing back.

That’s the secret to going from a GOOD writer to a GREAT a writer.

So here’s my question for you: is there any reason why you think I might be wrong? Where did I miss it? Have you had good experiences with writing coaches? Want to share a nightmare experience?

If so, let me. I look forward to your feedback.

Your turn

By the way, if you want to graduate from the minor to the major leagues … to dominate your domain with an authorial voice that people listen to … and go from a good writer to a great writer…

Then contact me today and I can help you like I helped Kacie.

We can customize a training program that fits your time and your budget and involves critiques of current work, featured assignments and weekly phone consultations.

It will be an investment in your future as a writer to be reckoned with.

Email me now.

By the way, if it makes you feel better, I can give you Kacie’s phone number. She would be happy to talk to you. Just ask.

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What Might We Do For You Now?

After writing Be Like Amazon: Even A Lemonade Stand Can Do It, several people have asked Jeffrey Eisenberg and me: What do you do for companies these days?

We’ve created a short list:

• Customer Experience Planning: We conduct workshops/ projects where we plan and optimize digital and real world experiences to increase sales, retention, and satisfaction. This includes commerce redesigns, process changes, continuous optimization, etc.
• Align Customer Brand Expectations with Business Metrics: We conduct workshops/ projects where we plan and optimize the customer journey, content marketing, analytics and testing plans that increase sales, leads and improve customer retention.
• Innovate Experiences: We conduct workshops where we brainstorm product, campaign and project creation in the areas of digital media and omnichannel customer experiences.
• Deliver Keynote Presentations: We speak at events about innovation, customer-centricity, digital transformation, continuous optimization, lead generation, and retail.
• Foster an Internal Growth Mindset to be like Amazon: We mentor senior executives about how to adopt and execute Amazon’s Four Pillars’ customer-centric approach to navigating digital transformation.

Does this help explain what we do, or is it confusing?

If we can help you, just let us know.

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What Prime Minister Trudeau’s Visit Meant to Vidyard

Chalk Talks: Measuring the Performance of Your Video

We always advocate the power of video to boil complex concepts down into simple, visual terms. Whether it’s a short how-to video or a longer product demo, video is a no-brainer for getting your point across. So why not apply that same methodology to video? Very meta, right?

Well, today we’re trying something new, and we think you’re going to love it! Say hello to the first episode of Chalk Talks – short, but informative deep-dives into video marketing best practices. In episode one, I’ll discuss how you can really measure the effectiveness of your video content, and the data you might be missing out on. Check it out:

 

Measuring the performance of your online video programs is becoming an increasingly important topic for today’s marketers. My name is Tyler Lessard, and in this Chalk Talk, we’ll explore why that’s become the case, and what the best practices are for moving from view counts to real measures of success for your online video programs.

View Counts Don’t Count

Before I dive into the what, I’d like to start off with the why, and some understanding of what’s changed in the last few years that is forcing us to think differently about what success means with our video content. The first is purpose. Why we’re using video and how we’re using video has dramatically changed in the last three to five years.

Video used to be reserved to top-of-funnel programs, which were really all about driving awareness. But video is now being used all throughout the buyer’s journey to educate, to drive interest, to convince, and to convert audiences into downstream customers. As a result, we need to think differently about what success means for our video content.

The second change is investment. Businesses continue to report increasing investments in online video content, and as a result, there’s increased pressure to justify the returns on those investments. So, you need hard data that tells you not just the number of views but how those videos are impacting your real business goals.

And finally one of the biggest changes to what success means for video is data. We’re living in a data-driven marketing and sales world, and there’s an expectation that you’ll have the insights you need to not only justify your investments but to understand what’s working, what’s not, and how to continuously optimize your results. These three things combined make it a huge imperative to better understand how your video is performing and what insights you can use to generate better results.

It’s all about moving from a status quo of understanding view counts and an overall campaign performance for those campaigns that include video to a much more mature model – a north star, if you will – where you’re now aligning your measurement with your real business goals. And to me, that comes down to three things: how is your video content helping you establish reach? How is it helping you drive engagement with your audience? And how is it helping you deliver real business impact, whether that be leads, pipeline revenue, or other forms of metrics? And finally, what insights can you glean from those performance metrics that help you continuously optimize and keep performing better as it pertains to these metrics?

The Metrics You’re Missing

Now that we’ve talked about the why, I want to  talk about the what. How can you put this into practice within your own business? This handy-dandy chart on the right here gives you a bit of a baseline for what kinds of metrics you’ll wanna think about in each of these different areas.

So let’s start at the top here and talk about reach for your individual video assets. For each video in your library, you’re not only going to work at the number of views, but how many number of viewers or unique viewers are you reaching, and how many minutes watched. This will give you a better sense for how long people are actually engaging in that video.

Second is looking at the different engagement metrics to know if that content is really working. What does your drop-off rate look like? Are people dropping off after 10 seconds? What does your overall engagement look like, and how many people are watching all the way to the end of that video? Industry benchmarks say that 60% is what you want to shoot for with the percentage of your viewers that are watching all the way to the end of the video. That means it’s a good performing video. If it’s more like the average, which is more in the 40 to 50 range, then you know that content could likely be improved to deliver better engagement.

And finally, most importantly, is understanding how each video is not only generating views and engagement but how is it generating number of leads, amount of pipeline, and amount of revenue in your business. This is all about the real impact that you’re generally looking for, and when you integrate video viewing data with your marketing and sales systems, you can actually start to do this. You can start to look at how each individual video is attributing to pipeline and is helping to influence the amount of revenue closed by your sales team.

This becomes a very magical thing, where you can start to really see which videos are over or underperforming, and you can start to look at the overall ROI of your investments. You also want to look at benchmarks and metrics for your overall video library. So not just each individual video, but looking at your aggregate investment in video. The same types of areas when it comes to reach – are your overall videos on a quarter over quarter driving an increased number of views? Is that going up and to the right?

Next I want to talk about number of minutes watched. I like this metric again because it’s a blend of views and engagement, and that’s the one you really want to start to see going up and to the right. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, it means your video content is generating more and more reach.

Next up from an engagement perspective is understanding which videos in a given quarter, or a given time period, are your top for audience engagement. You can understand a lot from that, see what your audience is really interested in, and use those insights to fuel better results.

And finally, most importantly, is how your overall video library is contributing to pipeline, revenue, and ultimately, ROI. You’re able to track who’s watching which videos and use that information in your sales systems to report back on influence and attribution. That’s the stuff that gets me really excited!

Are Your Videos Really Driving Results?

The last piece here is something not enough people are thinking about, and it’s taking the video lens off and looking at it from your marketing program’s perspective. How is video ultimately helping drive the results of your web programs?

Look at your website. Look at pages with and without video. Are those with video driving greater traffic? Are they generating better SEO results? Are they driving higher time on page? If so, you know what to do. Next you can look at social and email programs that include video versus those that don’t driving greater click-through rates, greater engagement, or ultimately, higher conversions for those programs. If that’s working, then that’s where you need to focus your video efforts.

And finally, account-based marketing, and sales enablement. Same idea. If you’re targeting specific accounts and using video to do that, is it working, and are you seeing accounts that engage with video progress faster or not? These are some of the things that are going to help you understand what’s working and help you figure out where you can optimize your programs to ultimately deliver a better overall ROI. What it all comes down to is aligning your measurement strategy with your business goals and generating the insights you need to improve your performance every day.

My name’s Tyler Lessard, and this has been a Vidyard Chalk Talk!

The post Chalk Talks: Measuring the Performance of Your Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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Startup Marketing: The Trick to Maximizing Growth with Minimum Effort

As a startup marketer, you’re probably keen on one major thing: maximizing growth with minimum effort. It’s simple math really: startups, more than any other type of company seem to have the biggest dichotomy between growth goals and resources available. So the less time you can spend on each additional unit of growth (whether that’s a new user or a new channel partner), the faster you can grow.

In other words, your time is finite but the possibilities for that time are not.

Make “Maximum Impact” Your Guiding Principle

This probably sounds unbelievably simple and you’re now thinking this whole post is the fluffiest of fluff. But I promise, simple is effective and I have seen this work. If you want to focus on things that are going to have the biggest impact, you have to live and breathe the mindset. And so does your team. At every turn, you need to be asking: are you spending your time in a way that’s going to have the biggest impact? Are you focusing on the target market that’s going to have the biggest impact? Have you hired the team that’s going to have the biggest impact?

How can we have the biggest impact?

This simple question should become the new mantra for your startup marketing organization. Without it, you can find yourself starting a Facebook page and posting status after status or article after article with no business results, yet still ticking the theoretical marketing checkbox!

So print this question out and post it on your cubicle wall or write it on the whiteboard in your open office. Tell everyone. Every single meeting should be clouded with the question “how do we get the maximum impact with this?”

Planning is Part of an Impactful Marketing Org

Once you’re in this mindset, it’s time to revisit your marketing plan (if you had one to begin with). Because now, you’ll want to know if your approach is the one that’s going to have the biggest impact, right?

Let’s nip another thing right in the bud first: yes, even as a startup, you need a plan.

No, you do not have all the time in the world and hey, as a startup or small business, planning too far in advance could all be for naught if your course changes in a few months. But if you’re going to be effective, you need some sort of plan to align the troops. Otherwise, as our own CEO tells us at Vidyard, you’ll be like Bambi on ice – trying so hard to get your whole unit going in one direction but really just flailing about, not going anywhere.

According to Hubspot, there are five major components of an impactful startup marketing plan that are going to help you hit your audacious growth goals: the right message, the right methodology, the right tools, the right team, and the right priorities.

Let’s take a look at each one and how you can maximize impact in each. To dive deeper into each component, check out Hubspot’s Startup Marketing Plan: Blueprint and Kit.

The Right Message

According to Hubspot, nailing the right messaging includes two parts: getting a grasp on your brand and its identity and pinpointing your target market via buyer personas. Knowing who you’re targeting and how you’ll appeal to them is absolutely critical. Find out as much as you can about how to define your target, what their day-to-day is like, what keeps them awake at night, and why your product or service appeals to them.

How Can You Maximize Messaging Impact?

The best way to have the biggest impact here is to avoid trying to boil the ocean. Your product or service can probably help multiple types of people but it’s often best to focus on one main target market and one main message to be able to really hit home and avoid diluting your communications.

When you’re identifying your first target market, you’ll want to choose those who already know they have a problem, for example, or are already looking for a solution, and not those who you’re going to have to convince they even have the problem before you convince them that your product is the best option for them to solve that problem! That’s too much convincing – and sounds like a lot of effort for minimal impact.

The Right Methodology

This is where you’ll determine what approach you’re going to use to build pipeline and grow your business. Will it be an inbound methodology focused on providing valuable education to your potential customers? Or an outbound approach where you seek out your customers and take a more direct selling approach?

How Can You Maximize Methodology Impact?

Again, focus can go a long way here. Chances are that as your business grows, you may experiment with multiple methodologies. For now, start with one. Take a look at how your competitors are approaching their market and see if you can find out what works for them and what doesn’t. Just keep in mind that maximum impact doesn’t mean you should only focus on things that will drive results now and not in the future. There’s a fine art in balancing these two timelines – you need success in both.

The Right Tools

There are so many tools available to marketers today that just listing out the options can be overwhelming. But hey, if you’re not leaning on technology, you’re probably missing out on results and efficiency. Get a comprehensive rundown of 58 tools for startups from Hubspot from social media to website optimization and even conversion rate optimization or check out this infographic for the ultimate small business marketing tech stack.

How Can You Maximize Tool Impact?

This one is simple math. How much is the tool going to cost you and what impact do you predict it’ll have on pipeline or the bottom line? If it’s not that easy, think about where you need the most help, or where the greatest opportunities for the time savings are.

The Right Team

The whole purpose of being a startup is that you’re just starting up, right? That means growth is in the future and that means people, too. Who will you need in the next phase of your startup marketing team and how will you ensure you hire the right people?

How Can You Maximize Team Impact?

Chances are that you won’t be able to hire an army right away. So if you could only hire one person, who would it be? Think about the best way to complement the team you already have while gaining a skill set that you don’t (and that you desperately need). Most importantly, don’t over-hire!

The Right Priorities

There are only 24 hours in a day. And every startup I’ve ever spoken to feels that’s not enough. So proper goal setting, prioritization, budgeting, and focus is paramount to a successful marketing organization because you’ll probably have an endless list of ideas and needle-moving initiatives but you just can’t do them all.

How Can You Maximize Prioritization Impact?

Ask where you can put your money that’ll get the greatest ROI. Start thinking about your team’s time in terms of units – if you only have 65 units in a week, how will you allocate them to get the biggest impact?

Dive into these five components of a successful startup marketing plan with Hubspot’s Startup Marketing Plan: Blueprint and Kit. Discover worksheets for building out your first target persona, templates for your marketing budget, and more.

Focus on High Impact Tactics, like Video

It goes without saying that if you’re going to be putting the effort into planning the high impact tools, methodology, or messaging, that you’ll want to make sure you’re using the tactics that get you the biggest bang for your buck, too.

That’s why we always recommend that startups take a particular focus on video.

Why? First and foremost, it’s how people are consuming content:

• Every day, over 4 billion videos are watched on Facebook
• Every month, over 6 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube
• 82% of all global consumer internet traffic will come from video by 2020, according to Cisco

Plus, it will have a major impact on your marketing results:

Video is a critical component to any startup marketing plan because it’s how consumers want to consume content. And thanks to modern developments, recording and publishing video content is easier than ever. I’d bet that you could probably record your first one in the next 5 minutes with a free tool like ViewedIt.

Want to learn more about video for your startup? Check out these 17 reasons why small businesses should be using (more!) video. Or, if you’re wondering how you should be using video, dive into 10 ways small businesses should be using video (with examples!)

The post Startup Marketing: The Trick to Maximizing Growth with Minimum Effort appeared first on Vidyard.

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Vidyard Selected as Finalist for MIT Sloan CIO Symposium’s Innovation Showcase

Vidyard Recognized as Video for Business Innovator

Kitchener ON – May 9, 2017 – The 14th annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium today announced Vidyard was selected as a top 10 innovator for the 2017 Innovation Showcase. Vidyard’s video platform for business was selected based on strategic value and innovation to the digital enterprise now and in the future. At the Symposium on May 24, Vidyard will showcase its leading video platform to a number of the world’s most creative and influential IT executives, helping them to embrace video as an integrated part of their marketing, sales, service and internal communications programs.

“If a picture is worth 1000 words, imagine the power of video. Vidyard’s video platform for business enables organizations to engage their audience and accelerate business results. With Vidyard, marketing teams can increase leads, sales teams can create more opportunities and customer service teams can achieve higher customer satisfaction,” says Jeff Loeb, chief marketing officer at Vidyard. “Over 75,000 professionals use Vidyard to create, host, personalize, monetize and measure their business videos. It’s truly innovative.”

Vidyard helps marketing, sales, support and management teams create, share, monetize and measure video. Marketing and sales teams accelerate sales cycles by creating personalized and interactive video that drives engagement, captures leads and guides the buyer’s journey. Audience engagement data is passed to sales reps via marketing automation platforms (MAP) including Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot and more. This enables reps to focus on highly engaged and educated prospects and have more targeted and relevant conversations. Global leaders, including Microsoft, McKesson, Lenovo, Cision, Citibank, Dynatrace, MongoDB and Sharp, power their video engagement strategies with Vidyard. Customers can also download Vidyard’s free Chrome extension, ViewedIt for screen, voice and webcam recording so that sharing and tracking personalized videos is easy.

“It is with great honor that we recognize these 10 companies for our 2017 Innovation Showcase,” said Anton Teodorescu, co-chair of the Innovation Showcase. “The Symposium provides an opportune environment for these early-stage companies to form valuable partnerships with CIOs and a platform to demonstrate their technologies that are building the digital enterprise.”

After careful consideration, the Innovation Showcase Judges evaluated and selected Vidyard for this honor based on the following criteria:

• Have a B2B or B2C enterprise IT solution product in the market;
• Are selling enterprise IT solutions to CIOs or corporate IT departments; and
• Show innovation and/or strategic value and potential impact on the top and/or bottom lines

 

More Information:
For a full list of Innovation Showcase finalists visit http://www.mitcio.com/innovation
The Innovation Showcase will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Kresge courtyard tent on Wednesday, May 24, 2017, at MIT in Cambridge, MA. The full agenda for the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is available at www.mitcio.com/agenda.

About Vidyard
Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video platform for business that helps organizations drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Microsoft, Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

About the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is the premier global conference for CIOs and digital business executives to become more effective leaders. In one day, CIOs and senior IT executives explore enterprise technology innovations, business practices and receive actionable information that enables them to meet the challenges of today and the future. The Symposium offers a unique learning environment by bringing together the academic thought leadership of MIT with the in-the-trenches experience of leading, global CIOs and industry experts. The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is organized and developed by the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), and the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). For more information and to register for this year’s Symposium, visit www.mitcio.com.

Editor’s Note:
Journalists interested in press credentials or speaking with any of the Showcase Innovation finalists should contact Caroline Legg (caroline@warnerpr.com; 978-255-4488), Warner Communications.

Media Contact:

Sandy Pell, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications
Vidyard
press@vidyard.com

Vidyard Selected as Finalist for MIT Sloan CIO Symposium’s Innovation Showcase

The post Vidyard Selected as Finalist for MIT Sloan CIO Symposium’s Innovation Showcase appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/press-releases/vidyard-selected-finalist-mit-sloan-cio-symposiums-innovation-showcase/

Forrester Ranks the Martech that Makes the Biggest Impact

If you’re anything like most marketers, your budget is sacred. You only have so much money to spend, and you have to make sure you’re spending it wisely, and seeing ROI on your investments.

So with all the new technologies emerging, like artificial intelligence, internet of things, and personalized video, how do you know what to invest in, and what to ignore? We were worried about that too. So we wanted to share this brand new Forrester report to help you make informed decisions about the future of martech – with advice from the experts!

In The Top Emerging Technologies For B2B Marketers, Forrester looks at 11 future-proof marketing technologies, ranks them by how likely they are to provide long-term value for your business, and gives case studies of successful companies that are using them. If you’re looking to allocate your 2017 budget, and want to make sure you’re spending it on something that will really give you an edge, you don’t want to miss this report!

Download the report and learn:

• What technologies can create a significant advantage for your business in 2017 and beyond
• How marketing technology is evolving and how to stay ahead of the curve
• Key use cases for new technologies like internet of things and programmatic advertising
• Recommended vendors to start implementing this new martech right away

The post Forrester Ranks the Martech that Makes the Biggest Impact appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/forrester-ranks-martech-makes-biggest-impact/