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Ghost Busting: Is Your Content Haunted by These Scary Ghostwriter Myths?

7th September 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

Ghost Busting: Is Your Content Haunted by These Scary Ghostwriter Myths?

Content marketing is full of ghostwriters, producing professionally written content under someone else’s byline. I’ve done plenty of ghostwriting assignments over the years, penning magazine columns and blog posts for CEOs and other professionals. Ghostwriting is simply a fact of life for an agency or freelance writer and I have no problem with that. Outsourcing at least some of the content production is unavoidable for many businesses.

However, I’ve also encountered a lot of confusion over how ghostwriting should work and where lines should be drawn or credit given.

I still receive a number of requests every year to ghostwrite a regular blog or column for a brand, agency, or one of their clients. Unfortunately, too many of these inquiries demonstrate just how little is understood about the writing process and the true value of the ideas behind the words.

These are merely my own observations from personal experience. If you’re a content writer, journalist or blogger you may have different ideas on how to handle ghostwriting opportunities (and if so, let me know in the comments). If you’re a business or agency, this might just give a little insight into what you’re really asking of us with your ghostwriting inquiries.

Who’s the thought leader?

Many corporate blogs and content pieces are supposedly (warning: buzzword alert) “thought leadership” tactics. By posting informative and insightful content, the brand appears experienced and authoritative. And this can be very persuasive for consumers looking for someone trustworthy to advise them on a purchase. But, if a brand hires a subject matter expert to ghost write under the brand’s byline, passing off the writer’s ideas and opinions as its own, that seems far less trustworthy.

It just seems incredibly deceptive, to me. Any authority and trust assigned to the brand as a result of that content – which is surely the intention of such thought leadership – would be terribly misplaced. It’s like a baker putting a delicious-looking store-bought cake in the window because he was either too busy to create his own display or too unskilled to match the same quality.

Case in point: a while back I was approached by a digital agency looking for a “higher-end writer with expertise in digital marketing strategies”. The email explained that the team were fans of my articles for the Content Marketing Institute, praising the insightful marketing advice and entertaining style: I would be a perfect match for one of their clients.

“Sure,” I said. “Tell me more,” I said. I explained that my rates are higher than most, but if it was me they wanted, we should chat.

The reply quickly came back. This was actually for the agency’s own blog, not a client. Extremely tight turnarounds from brief to first draft (48 hours) plus another 24-48 hours for revisions. Oh, and this would be a ghostwriting gig to boot, going out under their brand’s byline, not mine. I would do the work, they would take the credit (and benefit from the value). And then they offered me a rate that would barely cover my coffee consumption while writing the piece.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced this sort of inquiry many times – offering basic production-line rates for what they acknowledge is premium content – and often without the benefit of credit. Speaking of which …

How much is a byline worth?

My articles for CMI’s Chief Content Officer magazine have proved to be popular, so inquiries aren’t unusual. But each of those articles takes a great deal of time and effort, including three or four drafts to dig deep into a specific topic, explore my own thinking, form an argument, research supporting information and examples, come up with an entertaining angle, scrape off the cliches, and wrestle every paragraph into submission. These columns are my showcase, combining my experience as a magazine columnist and blogger with my experience as a content marketer while allowing me an opportunity to further develop and explore my own theories and observations.

On a couple of occasions, enquirers have suggested I lower my rates or offer a discount precisely because they weren’t using my byline. The idea seems to be that my name must have some value thanks to my reputation in the industry (such as it is) and the popularity of my CMI articles. So, if they don’t exploit that reputation they shouldn’t be charged for it.

However, the reverse could also be argued. My rep is a by-product of my experience and ideas, which definitely does have a value even without my name attached. In fact, I should probably charge above my usual rate for content that uses my ideas without my byline because, by doing so, they’re effectively buying my IP. If I’m coming up with the topics, research, insights, advice, opinions and conclusions, I’ll be damned if someone else can claim the credit while paying me less for the privilege.

That’s not just 1,000 words of content, that’s me on the page! And I ain’t giving away the best of myself for pocket change.

Collaborating with your ghost writer

Thankfully, most ghostwriting gigs are not like dodgy bakers. A huge number of celebrity autobiographies use a ghost writer: After all, most autobiographies are by people whose fame doesn’t derive from skilled word-smithery. Readers understand this.

The ghost writer interviews and researches the person, takes guidance from them on what to include or leave out, collaborates on the story to be told and then applies the structure and the words that form the final book. At every stage, it is still the celebrity’s story. As UK celeb Katie Price told The Guardian, “I talk in a tape and say the stories that I want. [The ghost writer] then writes each chapter. It comes back, and I read it through.” Her manager Claire Powell sums up the process even more bluntly. “They just write it into book words.”

I’d like to think there’s a bit more to the process than that. But a ghostwriting gig should still be more of a collaboration with the writer operating as the scribe to the client. Sometimes, the writer may also be a kind of muse, prompting the right anecdotes or asking the right questions to uncover the client’s ideas and thoughts on relevant topics in sufficient detail.

This remains my approach when I take ghostwriting gigs. The content is a collaboration between me and the person whose name will take the byline. The client determines the topic for each post and should provide at least some of the key points, opinions and supporting information to be included. Some of my favourite ghostwritten pieces have started out as recorded conversations with the client on an agreed topic, before using their ideas and responses – as well as their own analogies or turns of phrase – to form the basis of one or more articles. I become the conduit for their ideas and opinions, not the source of them.

This is a skill in itself, a different writing discipline with its own complexities, particularly as I have to try to capture the client’s style, tone and ‘voice’ while reducing the giveaway fingerprints of my own distinctive writing style. It’s not a lesser or easier form of writing – it can be even more time consuming – so that I usually charge a similar rate to my other work.

Yes, I’m afraid good content writing isn’t cheap no matter how you approach it.

That’s what I think. But what about you? Are you a byline discounter or a ghost buster?

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Copywriting

Ad Blocker Wars: Is Your Content on the Right Side?

8th April 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

Ad Blocker Wars: Is Your Content on the Right Side?

Crikey, marketers and publishers can be slow on the uptake sometimes. Advertising revenue has been declining for decades, leading many to predict the long and painful death of traditional media business models. Add to this the rapid increase of ‘banner blindness‘—as skeptical website visitors filter out display advertising by either ignoring it or using an ad blocker—and publishers have found themselves at war with their own readerships.

I began using an ad blocker a few months ago. Sure, I know many people who have used them for years, but as a marketer who also runs workshops and writes about online marketing, it made sense for me to keep an eye on what advertising was out there. Eventually, even I found the experience increasingly irritating until I simply wanted the constant interruptions and irrelevant grabs for attention out of my way.

Certainly, some websites have taken display advertising to ridiculous extremes in an effort to shore up a crumbling business model.

Anyone know what movie this is advertising? pic.twitter.com/9dWLJ9grjU

— Anna Spargo-Ryan (@annaspargoryan) March 3, 2016

Sure, not all display advertising is as unsubtle as the above, but the trend is increasingly desperate.

A bad DEAL for readers

Switching on an ad blocker for the first time in years was a surprising experience. While I had quieted many of the interruptions, I began to encounter something possibly even more annoying—publishers begging me to switch my ad blocker off. Some sites simply plead with me to add the URL to my whitelist; “Help us continue to provide you with quality content”. Others hit me with a doorway page, firmly denying me access to the content while I continue using my ad-blocker.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) devised a handy acronym to educate publishers and advertisers on how to treat visitors with ad blockers.

D – Detect ad blocking software, in order to initiate a conversation

E – Explain the value exchange that advertising enables

A – Ask for changed behavior in order to maintain an equitable exchange

L – Lift restrictions or limit access in response to consumer choice

I came across this acronym only recently, in the Ad Nauseum section of the latest issue of UK satirical magazine Private Eye where it was suitably ridiculed.

So the ad industry’s solution to the fact that everyone hates their ads online is to, er, get publishers to beg readers to put up with them. Making better, or at least less irritating ads would perhaps be just too hard.

Private Eye: issue 1414, 18 March 2016.

Exactly. The very idea pits publishers and advertisers against their own readerships. Rather than change their own behaviour, advertisers and publishers are demanding visitors change theirs instead. This is trying to solve a problem by completely ignoring the cause. Instead of tackling why customers consider the existing advertising model such a terrible experience and finding a better way, publishers are trying to make the ad-free alternative an even worse experience.

Forbes is a perfect example. Click a link to Forbes and you’re hit with a message that counts down three seconds before blocking access to the content. This replaces the previous advertisement that would inevitably force three seconds of attention from me before I could click the “Continue to Site” button.

Screenshot of Forbes ad blocker page

If you are guilted enough to switch your ad blocker off, Forbes promises an ‘ad-light’ experience for 30 days. This ad-light version still has plenty of ads, but according to Digiday’s experiments, the spares the reader from only the most irritating ad formats—animated ads and autoplay video. “For instance, the top story on the site with the “ad-light experience” still serves a 730 x 90 leaderboard, three 300 x 600 pixels display ads, along with eight “from the Web” paid content placements.”

Within a few weeks, these new doorway pages and pop-up messages began to interrupt and annoy me almost as much as the advertising I was trying to avoid. Previously, I could at least choose to ignore most display advertising, but now many websites were forcing me to make extra clicks and even update my browser extension just to read a short article. When someone shares a link with me on Twitter, it shouldn’t be an epic journey for me to check it out. Sometimes, I would oblige by hitting the ‘one time only’ setting on my ad blocker, while on other occasions the guilt-tripping interruption would irritate me enough to click the back button instead.

OK, I get that Forbes (and other publishers) need to make money to continue producing the content. Of course I get it. But maybe, just maybe, forcing readers to accept advertising they clearly don’t want isn’t the best way to build loyalty. Maybe, just maybe, bad display advertising practices are causing more damage than good.

The pickle analogy

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve always taken the pickles off burgers. Can’t stand them. Even the juicy residue is enough to put me off. So when eating at a certain burger establishment, I always take the option to customise my order. “No pickles, please”. Having worked as a burger flipper in said establishment as a teen, I know such orders are not uncommon. But “hold the pickles” orders naturally introduce inefficiencies into the kitchen that is trying to churn out a steady production line as quickly as possible—the heart of the fast food model.

Now imagine if said establishment decided to stop allowing customers to customise their orders according to personal likes and dislikes. Imagine if the paper-hatted till jockey responded to my request by pointing to a sign that said; “If you want to enjoy our exclusive special sauce, you need to accept the pickle”. If you put a pickle on my burger, I’m still not going to eat it. Plus my burger will still taste worse for the unwanted intrusion. Special sauce be blowed! I’m going for a kebab instead.

Isn’t this exactly how many publishers are currently fighting the ad blocker war? Some people don’t mind the ads, just as millions of people still inexplicably allow pickles on their burgers every day. But an increasing number of people do mind the ads. And when we find a way of customising our content snack to *ahem* “remove the pickle”, we’re told we have to eat it or don’t come back.

If that’s how publishers want to play it, fine. There is plenty of other content competing for my attention. After all, this is a readers’ market where at any time everyone has access to more content on every conceivable topic than they could ever hope to consume. So, unless your content is so earth-shatteringly exclusive and valuable that the inconvenience of missing it outweighs the irritation of advertising, then the argument to switch off my ad blocker isn’t a strong one.

And, let’s be honest, most content – particularly of the listicle, mass-produced, production line variety – currently falls well below that essential, unmissable, exclusive bar.

Wasted impressions and pity clicks

So if a publisher does convince a reader to switch off their ad blocker. Does this mean they’re any less likely to be irritated by the advertising? Does this mean they’ll give the island ads and badly-targeted campaigns any more positive attention? Will they resist switching off the autoplay video and actually watch the irrelevant and repurposed TVC? Of course not. Neilsen has proven that, even without an ad blocker, we’ve become very good at filtering out display advertising.

Over the years, I’ve occasionally visited websites that go as far as asking visitors to click at least one advert “to support our partners that helped pay for this quality content”. Aren’t “pity clicks” a teensy bit unfair on the advertisers paying for them? Surely, any advertiser wants clicks motivated by the marketing message itself, not by some misguided sense of duty or obligation to the publisher who delivers it. If clicks simply become a way for readers to support the inadequate and desperate business model of publishers, the value of those clicks becomes significantly less. And lower value clicks will eventually impact advertising rates, further cutting into advertising revenue and continuing the death spiral.

C’mon. Why can’t we come up with a better DEAL – one that readers will embrace.

D – Ditch the click bait designed purely to drive shares and impressions

E – Enhance the quality, depth and value of your content

A – Align with online behaviours and expectations for a more rewarding experience

L – Launch new revenue streams relevant to a growing audience of loyal readers

This is why content marketing – even native advertising, when it’s done well – are the best opportunity publishers and marketers have to reach the right audience with the right message in ways that don’t intrude, interrupt or irritate.

Because no one ever sold more burgers by making people eat pickles they don’t want!

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Featured Tagged With: ad blockers, advertising, Digiday, Forbes, Neilsen, Private Eye, publishing

Media vs Message: Could Your Content Win a Presidential Debate?

23rd March 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

Media vs Message: Could Your Content Win a Presidential Debate?

Think being a content marketer is tough? Try convincing an entire nation! Anyone fighting to gain or retain the White House needs to know a thing or two about getting a message across in the most persuasive way possible. And with a relentless news cycle in print, television and radio, plus the newer channels of social, email, apps and more, the choice of media can have a massive impact on that message.

We’re months deep into the USA’s presidential primaries hitting us from all sides with ads and counter ads, debates and press conferences, protests and arguments. And really, really bad hair. Donald Trump’s message may be confused and often incoherent, but he knows how to use each medium to great effect.

Content marketers frequently confuse media with message. So which is more important? What can marketers learn from White House campaigns?

Does Message Trump Medium?

I’m a West Wing tragic and a devoted follower of the “teachings” of White House speech-writer Toby Ziegler. The episode Life on Mars contains a scene that may seem eerily familiar to many content marketers.

TOBY: You think we should run a counter ad.

WILL: We have to.

TOBY: Saying what?

WILL: Oh, I don’t know.

TOBY: What do you mean?

WILL: What do you mean?

TOBY: We’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes.

WILL: I came in to show you the spots and to tell you I think we should run a counter ad. I don’t have an idea for one.

TOBY: Well, get one. Have an idea. Don’t come in here with half a thing and not be able to … you know … after you’ve walked me to the brink and say, “We’ve got to do this, it’s important, though I have no earthly idea how.” Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing but doesn’t really know how to get the most out of it!

Sure, his ranting gets the better of his syntax at the end there, but the point is clear.

Too often, marketers plan content driven by a perceived need to do “something” without necessarily having a clear idea to back it up.

“We need a white paper.” “It’s time for another YouTube video.” “Let’s launch a blog because all of our competitors have.” None of these are good enough reasons to do anything if there isn’t a worthy content idea behind it.

This focus on medium over message can waste time, money and resources producing content poorly suited to the channel or weakened by a process that’s upside down.

That’s why there is so much mediocre, uninspiring and repetitive content out there that hardly anyone reads/views. On our frantic marketing treadmills, the motivation to publish something – anything – to tick a particular box can be stronger than the willingness to spend enough time planning and producing something truly exceptional.

This extremely common approach forgets that the medium – e-book, video, blog post, infographic, etc. – is just the container for the content – the idea, information or message. After all, isn’t that what “content” literally means? We want the beans, not the tin they came in.

You’ve got to start with an idea – and a good one!

  • What valuable research or information does the company have that would merit a white paper?
  • What information is best conveyed as a video?
  • Is there a fresh theme for the blog that can inspire enough exceptional content ideas without repeating what’s already commonplace?

Yet, while the quality of your content is important, that doesn’t mean any old container will do. Those beans might not be quite as fresh and delicious if they come to us in a paper bag …

… Or Does the Medium Trump the Message?

Marshall McLuhan coined the term “The medium is the message” in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) to describe how the choice of medium can have significant consequences for how a message is received, interpreted and understood. This is best illustrated by another White House example, this time from the real world.

In 1960, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in what was the very first televised presidential debate. Despite television’s ascendancy – 88% of American households had a TV set – many in the audience still tuned in their radios to hear the two candidates present their arguments.

Polled after the debate, the radio and television audiences gave conflicting versions of the outcome. The smaller radio audience overwhelmingly gave the debate to Nixon, while TV watchers plumped for Kennedy as the outright winner. The larger TV audience, therefore, translated into a huge boost to Kennedy’s campaign.

In 2010, Time magazine marked the fiftieth anniversary of the debate with an article that couldn’t overstate the impact this shift in medium had on the presidency:

It’s now common knowledge that without the nation’s first televised debate … Kennedy would never have been president.

Time magazine, How the Nixon-Kennedy Debate Changed the World

Comic frame depicting Kennedy and Nixon's Presidential debate

Both broadcasts had included the same arguments, the same ideas, the same content. The only difference was the medium.

On radio, Nixon’s rhetoric was what people expected—firm, resolute, experienced. On television, Nixon looked pale and unwell, following a recent hospitalisation. Under the studio lights, he appeared to be sweating and uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Kennedy looked sharp, handsome, presidential and tanned.

These factors might seem irrelevant when we should be assessing the power of their words. But we never assess words in a vacuum. We take in a wide variety of other signals when interpreting meaning, including body language, tone, facial expressions and other signs. Nixon’s discomfort meant that those who could see these additional signals placed less trust in what he had to say.

On radio, Nixon sounded presidential. On television, he looked like a phoney.

Every medium includes a different mix of additional signals. The layout of a print magazine – such as the font – can influence our interpretation of the message. You wouldn’t undermine a serious message by formatting it in Comic Sans, for example.

How a YouTube video is put together can contain numerous clues that also add to the message: High production values, music and graphics might suggest a confident, big-budget commitment while a simple video shot on an iPhone may indicate a much lower budget but far greater authenticity.

A white paper indicates seriousness and academic rigor (or stultifying boredom depending on your perspective), while an attractive e-book might present the same ideas and information in a less intimidating, more casual manner.

Each of these choices sends signals to the reader/viewer about not only how the brand wants to be seen, but also how they see the audience. Above all, it adds many additional layers of meaning to the content itself – most of which may only exist in the minds of the audience.

Your choice of medium and the format you apply to it should be the best compliment to your ideas and content. They’re equally important. Paying more attention to one over the other will almost always undermine both.

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Featured

Hunting Unicorns: How to Find Expert Writers for your Content

3rd March 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

Hunting Unicorns: How to Find Expert Writers for your Content

It’s a common challenge for many content marketers: You need writers capable of delivering highly readable content for your blogs, e-books, and more. However, your writers also need expertise in your topic area if their content is to have the necessary insight, heft and authority your audience expects.

Finding a good writer who is also an expert on a niche or highly technical industry topic – and who is also available to write for you at an affordable rate – can be like hunting the proverbial unicorn. Yet the very exclusivity of those skills is what makes the hunt worthwhile.

There probably isn’t an industry or topic area that isn’t already buried under an avalanche of content. For your content to stand out it must be exceptional and it must be rare – and rare, exceptional content demands an exceptionally rare kind of writer.

A unicorn-shaped hole

Before I went freelance, I worked in the marketing department of a new cloud hosting business, where I was responsible for all content and social media. I had years of experience in another web hosting company writing reams of content for the average non-technical website owner. However, while many principles were the same, I quickly learned that the cloud hosting audience was very different. Our customers were software developers, sysadmins and CIOs—highly technical, distrustful of marketing and certainly more knowledgeable about cloud computing than I would ever be.

I’m certainly more technical than most people I know, but this was a whole new level. I know just enough web code to break my website in increasingly imaginative ways and with stunning regularity. So while I understand the general concepts and some of the technical details involved in cloud computing, I’m definitely no expert.

This posed a problem. I was comfortable writing web copy, email promotions, case studies and other marketing paraphernalia but more technically detailed long-form content was definitely beyond me. No matter how good my writing, why would anyone read a technical white paper written by the least technical person in the building? I couldn’t offer any genuine thought leadership on the topics that mattered to them. Why would anyone care what the guy in marketing wanted to say?

While everyone on the team was supportive of the content strategy, none of them were aspiring writers. I needed professional writers capable of matching the technical expertise of our audience and I knew they wouldn’t be easy to find.

I had a unicorn-shaped hole in my content marketing strategy.

Where unicorns roam …

The unicorn problem can become even more obvious when a business decides to outsource some or all of its content writing. The more technical or niche the topic, the fewer writers will have the necessary authority and knowledge to drive genuinely informative and essential content.

You might start by approaching a few content agencies. While any agency will tell you that they can supply exactly what you need, you’ll need to dig deeper to test their claims. Some agencies rely on internal teams of generalist writers working across all their clients so that I would be allocated a writer with even less expertise in the field than myself. However, others build large databases of experienced writers and subject matter experts from a range of fields, only offering them appropriate projects if and when there is a suitable match.

Ask how the agency will source and assign the right writer(s) for the job, insist on a shortlist of writers for your approval and ask for samples of their work.

This last point is extremely important. Is their experience represented by a list of generic blog posts with no exclusive insight and only basic, entry-level advice? Or, do they have any byline credits in reputable magazines or industry journals?

Remember, while you may be able to assess the quality of their writing, you may not be the right person to assess the quality of their ideas and information. Run a few articles past your team to see if they raise any red flags. Check social media to see how others react to their writing. If your target audience routinely shares or comments on their articles (or doesn’t), it can give you an idea of their influence and authority.

Alternatively, research any relevant industry news sites and publications. With many years researching and writing for industry columns or trade journals, journalists already know how to write for such a demanding audience.

Unfortunately, some journalists are extremely resistant to any suggestion of writing brand content. Their distaste is usually due to a misguided opinion that branded content and journalistic ethics are somehow mutually exclusive. However, there are many other journalists that not only see content marketing as a valid form of journalism but also may be keen for the opportunity as newsrooms and traditional media continue to cut back.

Whether you find the unicorn in an agency or a newsroom, be prepared to pay extra. Unicorns charge more – a lot more – and quite rightly too. After all, you’re paying for their years of experience, specialised insight and IP, not just their skill with words.

The labour of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas!

No; I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.

James Whistler (to an impertinent judge): The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890)

Building the unicorn

If you can’t find (or afford) a unicorn, don’t panic – most of you won’t. It might be like taping a cone of paper to a horse’s nose but you can still create a unicorn with the right approach.

The best subject matter experts could well be within your own business. No one knows what your business does and how it matters to your customers better than the team behind your products and services. That’s why they’re there. Yes, they’re not necessarily great writers – they may not even be okay writers – but they will be once you’ve finished with them.

In my experience, some of the most valuable branded content are derived from information and expertise that could only have come from within that business. While I can craft the story and add the words, the core of the content – the information, the data, the insights, the predictions, the advice – is provided by other team members with knowledge and expertise I could never replicate with a Google search. And this means the final piece of content will not only be informative and well-written but also unique to that business. It is their unique insight, their experience, their internal research, their specific data.

Back at the cloud hosting company, this is how I eventually filled my unicorn-sized hole from within. Once a month, our staff meeting included a call for ideas suitable for articles and blog posts. While many were nervous in the beginning, sceptical of their blogging skills, I soon reassured them that all I wanted was their expertise for me to build upon. If they could send me as much or as little as they could manage, in whatever form they felt comfortable, I would take their ideas and information the rest of the way.

All I needed was one contribution from each person every few weeks and the blog would have a variety of expert viewpoints and advice. And that’s exactly what happened. One might send me a few bullet points to summarise an idea or step-by-step advice for me to flesh out while another would send me quite serviceable first drafts. I quickly learned what each person was capable of and how much time they had to give me – adapting my approach to suit each. Some contributions required more work from me than others, but the result was a consistently strong blog that represented the genuine expertise – and, yes, even thought leadership – of the company.

As the team saw their bylines attached to the published blog posts, their enthusiasm grew. After all, I was making them look good and helping to develop their own online reputation and authority. It may seem a bit more pantomime horse than unicorn but everyone was a winner – including the audience, who got the content they deserved!

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Featured

Why 85% of Marketing Statistics are Just Bad Advice

26th February 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

Why 85% of Marketing Statistics are Just Bad Advice

Marketers constantly crunch data to try to determine what works (or doesn’t) and how we can improve or optimise our efforts. Unfortunately, most marketers aren’t data analysts or statisticians. If you want to use maths to answer meaningful questions, you have to know which are the right numbers, how to find them, how to interpret them and which insights to draw.

“They’re pretty high mountains,” said Azhural, his voice now edged with doubt.
 
“Slope go up, slope go down” said M’Bu gnomically.
 
“That’s true,” said Azhural. “Like, on average, it’s flat all the way.”
 

Terry Pratchett: Moving Pictures, p141

This remains one of my favourite Terry Pratchett gags because I come across variants of this quite regularly in the marketing world. It reflects how statistical information is constantly oversimplified, misinterpreted (or sometimes manipulated) to support an ideal view or draw meaningless conclusions.

This is why I get so frustrated with simplistic claims, such as: “Headlines with odd numbers generate 20% more clicks than headlines with even numbers”.

2020 Update: The post is no longer on the Hubspot website but can still be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: The Anatomy of a Highly Shareable List Post.

That’s not an insight. Saying that most leaves are green doesn’t help anyone understand how chlorophyl works. The article and infographic tell me nothing about why odd-numbered lists may (or, indeed, may not) drive more traffic, which would be far more useful to know. It sticks purely to the numbers as if that’s all the information we need. Follow the formula and the numbers will save you.

Except, they won’t. Statistics need context and interpretation.

Some very odd numbers

I’m pretty certain modern society hasn’t developed an irrational and unexplained bias towards half of all numbers just because they’re odd. There has to be more to it.

When I posted my disbelief on Twitter it prompted an interesting discussion that concluded it isn’t about odds or evens at all. We decided a more likely explanation would be that some numbers seem accurate and authentic while others seem rounded up. 100 Tips to … seems artificial and neat, while 87 Tips to … suggests a more exhaustive, detailed and selective list that has clearly determined there isn’t an 88th tip worth mentioning.

This isn’t a new insight. It’s why Mount Everest was long considered to be 29,002 feet high. In 1856, Andrew Waugh – then British Surveyor General of India – first calculated the height of Everest as exactly 29,000 feet. Convinced that no one would believe his calculations were accurate, Waugh added two feet to the final figure in his report to avoid the impression of having rounded up and thereby protect his reputation. Hence, Waugh became the rather unfair answer to the question; “Who was the first person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest?”.

Yet Waugh still used an even number to suggest accuracy. While adding three feet may have been too much inaccuracy for Waugh to bear, history fails to record why he didn’t choose to write 29,001 feet instead.

Does a headline promising 88 tips really seem any less exhaustive and specific than one offering 87? I don’t think so – and I doubt any data can definitively show so. And, of course, any odd number that ends in a five can similarly give the appearance of inaccurate rounding, such as 25.

This is why the claim about odd numbers just has to be bogus. This is probably due to someone asking the wrong questions of the available data, and failing to correctly interpret or even validate the results. The original research, and every article that has since repeated the statistic, failed to look beyond the numbers to investigate what may really be going on. Instead, the article and infographic takes the statistic at face value and just moves on to the next simplified, untested claim.

In the case of this infographic, that would be “High quality images get 121% more shares”. But unless you let us in on how “high quality” is defined – and that’s a whole topic of its own – such a statistic is meaningless. You can’t have detailed statistical accuracy at one end of a claim and vaguely defined terms at the other (“engagement”, I’m also looking at you!)

Then there’s “Floating share buttons increase social traffic by 27%”. Okay, but even Twitter has admitted – and Chartbeat has proven – that there is absolutely no correlation between social shares/social traffic and whether people actually read your content, which must surely be your goal as a content marketer.

Cherry-picking one stat as circumstantial evidence to imply success, while ignoring more relevant and representative data, is real head-in-the-sand stuff.

I could go on, but I won’t. There’s another important issue that becomes obvious once we dig a little deeper into some of these pearls of statistical wisdom.

Is your source a goose, or can I have a gander?

Where do these stats originate? Let’s take my first example about odd-numbered list headlines and trace it back.

While Hubspot highlighted this stat in its social media updates and blog post, the writer’s source was an infographic from Siege Media – an SEO and content marketing agency. The infographic lists some sources at the bottom and it seems this particular stat is taken from an article posted by my mates at the Content Marketing Institute way back in 2011.

Already we can say that this information is five years old, at least. That doesn’t mean the stat is wrong – some trends and behaviours hold true no matter how old. But content styles have changed a lot in the last five years, driven by Google updates, changing social media behaviours and more.

Either way, I’d want to see some more recent data before I repeated the same stat when writing articles and blog posts for clients.

Even the 2011 article isn’t the original source. Written by the Senior Marketing Manager at Outbrain, the post discusses Outbrain’s recent research. “To learn more about what makes readers actually click through, Outbrain […] looked through data on 150,000 article headlines or titles that were recommended across our platform.”

Okay, so we know a little more about the sample size, but still not enough to help us interpret and assess the meagre and sweeping conclusions we’re given. Where are the numbers? What was the methodology? Above all, where is the link to this study?

I spent an hour searching Google for the original source. While I found a number of posts by Outbrain employees on various major websites that referenced the same statistics, and even more blog posts that then referenced those, I was unable to find any original research or any more detailed background to these claims.

This raises a couple of other issues. If Outbrain used unreleased internal research as a PR exercise to get some vague headline-worthy findings into articles on big sites such as Mashable, why does hardly anyone question their conclusions or ask for more evidence? I found only one commenter who asked for a link to the source material (no answer was given).

Alternatively, maybe the Outbrain research was once available but has since been taken down. After all, it was five years ago; web pages come and go. Over the years, the various guest posts may have identified and removed the broken link. If so, I’ve no problem with that. However, if anything, the removal of the link (if there ever was one) is just another indicator to a pedant like me that the information is outdated or no longer relevant.

Either way, both the date and the lack of an original source mean an infographic from December 2015 shouldn’t be repeating questionable stats from 2011. Without an original source, stripped of context and devoid of meaningful insight, it is no more than anecdotal hokum.

Yet marketing blogs and white papers are full of such unworthy claims, given a veneer of authenticity because of our industry’s obsession with data.

Let’s play Numberwang!

Honestly, I’m not picking on Hubspot, Siege Media and Outbrain. The above is just one example of a problem that plagues the entire industry.

Marketing’s obsession with finding a silver bullet formula for success means we are bombarded with advice that is often contradictory, drawing on insufficient data or distorted by generic assumptions.

  • Should blog post headlines contain eight or fourteen words?
  • Should blog posts be 250 or 2500 words?
  • Is it better to send your email newsletter on a Monday or a Tuesday?

Yes, most of the above examples advise caution: There is no definitive answer, there are many other variables in play, don’t take these stats as gospel. In short: “We’re not entirely sure about these findings either.”

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the same stats from being circulated without those caveats and warnings; reduced to basic graphs in infographics, summarised into bite-sized advice in listicles, and truncated into ever fewer characters for social media.

We’re surrounded by outdated findings, poorly sourced statistics and recycled facts that are continually amplified around the echo chamber until they become conventional wisdom.

Ironically, by the time this happens, such wisdom may have very little to do with reality.

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Featured

When Facts Are Free Your Content Needs More Punch!

18th February 2016 By Jonathan Crossfield

When Facts Are Free Your Content Needs More Punch!

The internet has forever transformed how we access facts and process information. Yet many marketers still produce content based on the assumption that there is value in merely curating information and facts. Sorry, but if content is to succeed today, it has to be a lot more than just factual.

Occasionally, my daughter will do something that reminds me I’m a dinosaur. Hazel has grown up with Google, Wikipedia and millions of other websites providing whatever information she wants with a few clicks. As a result, she’s developed a very different relationship with purely factual information.

When we’re watching films together, I will still go to my brain first when trying to remember where I’ve seen a particular actor before. But while I’m struggling with my memory, Hazel’s already got her smartphone out, opened the IMDB app and rattled off the actor’s entire filmography.

I have the same app on my phone, but using it still isn’t my first instinct. Instead, I go to my brain first, treating the internet as a safety net when my memory (increasingly) fails. I’m still conditioned by decades of having to think and memorise and make decisions without instant and ubiquitous access to information. Reaching for the smartphone feels like an admission of defeat – that my grey matter failed to retain or retrieve the necessary information.

Meanwhile, Hazel’s brain already defaults to the internet. She doesn’t see the need to retain random facts in her memory because the internet can retain it for her, while Google can be a far more reliable retrieval system. The internet has become an extension of her brain. Marshall McLuhan would most likely feel simultaneously validated and horrified.

If you’re over 30, you’re probably like me. We are the last survivors of an age that seems increasingly prehistoric. Our instincts, attitudes and behaviours were formed before the internet smashed a meteor-sized crater into society. Such pre-internet thinking will eventually become extinct.

Your 20th-century linear mind has been rewired into a 21st-century lattice.

Douglas Coupland: The Age of Earthquakes (2015)

The pre-internet brain

I’m still a fanatical buyer of dead trees, particularly non-fiction and reference books. Knowledge is, for me, best represented as a packed bookcase, not a mouse. Of course, I use the internet for research all of the time. But many of my habits and attitudes were shaped in the BG era (Before Google) when information and facts weren’t so easy to come by.

When I was at university in the late ‘80s, I quickly learned to sit close to the door when assignments were handed out. As soon as the lecture ended there was always a race to the library to grab the relevant books necessary to research the assignment. As the library usually only had two or three copies of each book on the reading list, and there were a hundred or so students on the course, delay could be costly.

Those of us who missed out would have a few limited options. You could bargain with someone to allow you to photocopy the relevant pages or collaborate on a study session (beer was a popular currency). You could hope that one of your housemates was a faster runner (which wasn’t an option for those of us flat-sharing with students from other courses). Or, as a last resort, you could hope the university book shop had a copy that wouldn’t blow your weekly budget.

Our access to information was limited by geography, availability, economy and the technology of the day. In many ways, information was its own economy—full of haves and have-nots, gatekeepers, curators and transactions.

By the time my daughter researched her first school project, search engines were available to help her. Facts were no longer locked away in small print runs but were instantly and freely available. Where once it took effort, time and money to learn how to make a perfect soufflé or discover the population of Nineteenth Century London, now it takes almost no effort, time or money at all. Ask Google (disclaimer: other search engines are available …) and numerous web pages will compete to give you the information you seek.

You may ask, “So what?” Doesn’t that prove content marketing is only going to increase in importance? Provide information to feed this hand-held digital brain extension and reap the benefits of a generation who are even more reliant on the internet for answers.

That appears to be the thinking behind much of the unremarkable content currently filling our search results and social media feeds. Most are probably commissioned and managed by marketers from the same pre-internet generation, hanging onto the outdated belief that merely providing access to curated factual information has a value. How many articles do we need on social media image dimensions? Is it really helpful to have hundreds of web pages repeating minor variations of the same straightforward “how to” advice? Does it add anything to the consumer’s experience to add yet another predictable used car buyer’s checklist to the thousands already indexed by Google?

As a result, content marketing has begun to eat itself. Far too much content is researched from Google, recycling information from the plethora of similar articles already out there, without adding anything new of genuine substance or insight. The only way such a content approach can succeed is by hoping the content somehow manages to be incrementally better than the source material that preceded it, including the competition. Surely, it’s insanity to chase increasingly small incremental improvements within the same topic area and with the same source material as hundreds of other marketers. Add in the usual pressures to continually optimise costs as well and it becomes unsustainable.

The Google brain

Increasingly, Google will answer purely factual queries right there in the search results, scraping the web to provide the most accurate answer it can without all of that messy clicking around. Ask Google “How did George Orwell die?” and a box appears at the top of the search results with the unmissable heading “Tuberculosis”, accompanied by a paragraph scraped from shmoop.com. There’s no need to click through to Shmoop, or any of the other websites containing biographies of the great writer.

Depending on your query, Google will even provide a quick cheat sheet of background info. Search for “King Alfred” and the right-hand column offers up a short bio, a summary of key dates, his family tree and a handful of images. School projects done in no time.

This is great for anyone looking for quick answers, but it is a potential nightmare for anyone whose content strategy relies on using that factual information to drive web traffic.

Last year, Joe Pulizzi said: “To put it simply, you can’t trust Google. It will stretch ‘fair rights’ usage as much as possible – so people can avoid having to visit your site as much as possible. Google is making it easy for the world and, in the process, diverting traffic away from your site.”

Yes, but only if your content doesn’t offer anything more valuable than otherwise standard factual info. Joe suggests Google is “making it easy for the world”. If our content strategies are in opposition to that goal, I suggest we’re on the wrong side.

But wait; there’s more.

Also last year, Google followed up the widely announced mobile-responsiveness update to its algorithm with a number of other adjustments that weren’t so public. Some websites noticed their rankings changing. This phantom update was later confirmed by Google as an adjustment to how the algorithm ranks various quality signals.

Hubpages noted that the phantom May update appeared to target informational or How to … content, but while some had noticed as much as a 22% decrease in search traffic, others reported an increase.

What’s going on? Google won’t get into specifics (no surprise) but a previous post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog following the Panda update in 2011 may offer some clues to the direction in which Google is heading.

The post lists a number of factors that Google considers when looking at quality signals, including:

  • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

There are many more quality signals, so I recommend reading the whole post. But the common theme is whether the information offers MORE than what is already commonly available. In short, does the content go beyond regurgitating basic or non-proprietary facts that are already freely available? Does it provide deeper insight, a new context or fresh ideas?

Maybe we’ll finally see an end to the flood of listicles and other production-line content that continually repackage the same information under the mistaken belief that this somehow qualifies as thought leadership.

Whenever Google has changed or evolved, businesses and marketers have complained that it is somehow being unfair. After so many blows, surely we’ve learned by now to never get too comfortable trying to low-ball our content for a quick Google boost.

Fresh Ideas, Not Stale Facts

Anyone can provide straightforward answers in response to straightforward questions. So we can forget any hope of extracting a benefit from purely curated information and aggregated facts. Forget the generic How to’s … and repetitive listicles, digests and handy guides. If that’s all you’ve got, the internet is full.

We should no longer expect to be rewarded for simply providing access to information. That’s old world thinking: BG thinking. Instead, we need to do more than churn out facts already well serviced by the internet and easily accessed by Google.

If information is knowledge, then wisdom comes from how we use it. Instead, produce content that expresses fresh and more complex ideas, offers deeper insights and genuinely leads our markets with new and original thoughts.

After all, isn’t that what thought leadership is supposed to mean?

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Featured

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