Congratulations on building the most innovative product on earth. It solves a major consumer pain point, leverages sophisticated technology, and is truly one of a kind.

So now what?

If you can’t connect with your target audience, your efforts will likely fall flat. Great products don’t always sell themselves. You need a great story to bring your company’s vision to life.

“In some cases, a product is super sexy, and people naturally just want to talk about it,” said Onboardly co-founder Heather Anne Carson. “In others, the power to succeed is entirely in your ability to tell a story.”

Start from Within

“The biggest pain point is struggling to first identify what your true unique story is.”

Storytelling is far from a natural process. You need to position your core message, align with with your target market, and drive sales — all challenging acts to balance. Start with what’s simple.

“I think the biggest pain point is struggling to first identify what your true unique story is — and then, to put it into words,” Carson said. “Ultimately, the best stories are the truest stories.”

Detach yourself from the rose colored glasses.

“It takes a certain degree of humility and honesty to dig into your true motivation for starting a company,” said Carson.

Know Your Motivations

Yes, you built something awesome. But why did you do it in the first place?

“For many entrepreneurs, there’s a deeper reason than just doing something you love,” Carson explained. “You want to change the world. Start by telling why.”

It’s as simple as understanding yourself. As Carson put it — “What is your reason for getting out of bed in the morning?”

Be Awesome

A common storytelling struggle that most startups face is choice. You have many stories to tell — which one is right?

You need to take the time to evaluate your product positioning to answer that question. Do your due diligence to find what ‘feels’ right.

“It’s easy to feel guilty about taking the time to reflect on your why instead of spending time on the product,” Carson said. “But from that, also comes a startup’s strength, in that these teams usually have a great story to tell.”

Be Assertive

Storytelling is far from a passive hobby.  You need to commit to fully understanding your group’s motivations and goals.

“Startup stories are always incredible.”

“Ideas don’t just materialize out of thin air,” Carson said. “They come from within and oftentimes, for most founders, they rise from extremely unique circumstances.”

And as a startup, that unique story is precisely your strength.

“Startup stories are always incredible,” Carson said. “I love being the one to help them tell their brand stories. I’m always cheering for the underdog. And by helping startups get noticed and get more customers, I get to do what I love every day.”

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

As brands foray into creating content, it’s helpful to learn from media experts who have been launching journalism brands for years and know how to develop an audience and construct stories. 

The Content Strategist spoke with Elizabeth Spiers, former editor of The New York Observer, who helped launch Gawker and Flavorwire and now consults with early-stage startups, about how to create strong content and navigate grey areas in the overlap of journalism and brand writing.

What do news publications need to do to adapt to digital? Any publication you see doing it really well?

I think that even now there’s still a lot of trepidation in the industry about web journalism cannibalizing print, and in most cases, the web and print versions of the same publications have completely different audiences. If everyone internalized this, you’d see more journalists breaking news as the story develops and then synthesizing it into longer pieces for print.

Even monthlies need to think like breaking news operations on the web.

But there’s still a tendency in traditional journalism to save the breaking news for the longer print piece, which I believe is a mistake. Even monthlies need to think like breaking news operations on the web.

I’m biased because I work with them, but I recently did a long feature on Groupon for Fast Company scheduled for the May issue. After Andrew Mason got fired in late February, I asked if I could do an intermediary piece for the web (I had the last interview with him before it happened) and they instantly understood what I wanted to do. It didn’t change the thrust of the print piece, but we had something that was relevant and timely on the web the day after Mason’s firing.

My editor, David Lidsky, was up late with the web editors Noah Robischon and Tyler Gray trying to get the draft I banged out in a few hours into shape for the next morning — which something you’d expect at a daily newspaper, but is much rarer at a monthly magazine.

You’ve been behind the launch of several media sites — any tips for setting tone and building an audience?

I think it’s important to have a distinctive tone. I was a big fan of the old SPY magazine and part of what I loved about it was that you could remove the branding and the bylines and still be able to identify a SPY story as a SPY story.

The biggest mistake people make when they launch something new is not understanding their audience.

There are formulas that work — slideshows of cats will probably never fade in popularity. But when, soon enough, every site in existence is doing slideshows of cats, you need a differentiating factor.

The biggest mistake people make when they launch something new is not understanding their audience — who they are and what they want. So they create a product that’s advertising-friendly but not appealing to readers.

And growing advertising and audience is not a chicken-and-egg problem. You absolutely have to have the audience first.

What tips do you have for writers who want to improve skills and begin freelancing for major publications — anything wrong with foraying into content marketing or writing for brands? 

I think it’s irrelevant. Freelance journalists have been doing technical and marketing writing since the beginning of time to make ends meet.

I think most would prefer more literary endeavors — book editing, ghostwriting, etc., but not everyone has that range of choices.

As long as there’s no conflict of interest — meaning you’re not writing marketing content for a company you’re also covering — I don’t see a problem with it.

Occasionally journalists will go on to work for a tech company, perhaps after covering the company they now work for. Do you have any concerns with journalistic integrity?

This isn’t new either. Every beat has a revolving door. I think you just notice it more in tech because it’s a sexier industry and big exits could mean big money for people who make the jump.

But journalistic integrity boils down to the individual and if someone’s willing to be corrupted, it’s probably not just the possibility of a job in the industry that’s a problem.

Good journalism is about letting the reporting drive the narrative.

And the beat reporters that have it the worst in terms of potential conflict are the media reporters — everyone you cover could offer you a job and there’s an almost 100% chance that eventually, you’ll end up working for a publication you’ve written about. But if you go into the beat knowing that you want to work in the industry you’re covering, it’s probably a bad sign.

I did the reverse — I worked in finance and tech before I ever did anything that would be considered journalism and I don’t have any curiosity about what’s on the other side because I already know.

I’d never cover a company I wanted to work for. I don’t want anything to bias me going in, and I think I’m fairly aware of my biases.

I think good journalism is about letting the reporting drive the narrative, and if, godforbid, you have a palpable need to be liked by your subject, you should probably get out of journalism.

You’re writing a novel — what journalistic skills carry over to fiction, and what initiated the project?

I don’t think it’s the same for everybody, but I learned how to construct a tight narrative via journalism. There are questions that you ask in journalism – Where is the dramatic tension? Is the lede/beginning of the story compelling? What motivates the subject? — that are equally applicable to fiction writing.

That said, fiction writing scratches a different itch for me. It’s less formulaic and you can be more experimental but it’s harder in many ways because you don’t have tight, obvious parameters.

Any content/editing pet peeves?

This is a beginner problem, but I’ve often had reporters file stories that were really just a chronological assemblage of their notes. You have to think about storytelling and not just whether you managed to get all the facts on the page.

And this is also a beginner problem, but understanding when it is appropriate to insert yourself into the story is something that seems to be learned over time. I think this happens largely because we put the giants of new journalism on a pedestal and don’t understand that crowbarring in your own experience of what happened does not necessarily make you Gay Talese.

You have to think about storytelling and not just whether you managed to get all the facts on the page.

If there is a compelling reason for you to insert yourself — you’re interviewing a famous cannibal and he tries to eat you, for example — that’s completely fine. If it’s a stunt journalism piece or a personal essay, it’s not only fine, but necessary.

But informing the reader of your every minute feeling during the interview ignores the fact that the reader doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t inherently care about your opinion. (Unless you actually are Gay Talese, and then I’ll concede that the reader might take the byline into consideration.) The reader cares about the subject and the story. Only insert yourself if it’s additive to the story.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

While working in PR for Vitro, a bi-coastal creative agency, Matt Van Hoven authored a daily email newsletter known as the Nerdletter. From January 2012 to April 2013, Van Hoven combed through countless cat photos, news articles, and media buzz to compile the daily digest.

With subscribers from firms such as Fast Company, Rackspace, and Mediabistro, Van Hoven’s Nerdletter tapped into the marketing, tech, and media scenes. Aesthetically, the Nerdletter reflected a simplified version of Vitro’s usual “sexy” look, with white text on a black background, and no images.

A bold white “VITRO” headed the email, with a quippy Van Hoven-penned greeting — “What are you passionate about? Have you done that lately?” — below. Then a weather report from Vitro’s homes — New York and San Diego — and finally the list of links. Each newsletter contained roughly 10 items ranging from the redesign of the hallowed red cup to an app that will tweet for you after you’re dead.

“We decided to do this really raw, almost Web 1.0-style, html thing.”

Vitro began the Nerdletter with a core list of 50 emails, and by the time Van Hoven left, the Nerdletter reached 550. “People are extremely reluctant to subscribe to anything that comes into their email,” Van Hoven said. “That was the one piece of feedback I consistently got from people, like ‘Yours is the only one I read,’”

Those who did make the commitment found a valuable resource.

“The best feedback I got was from Fast Company,” Van Hoven said. “There were five reporters and editors from Fast Company that read it, and half the development team at Rackspace. What I would find is that groups of people that knew and talked to each other, they were like, ‘Oh, did you see…?’ They would start turning to the newsletter more than their own feeds of stuff, to find those important stories of the day.”

“The Nerdletter was perfect both in content and tone,” James Adams, CEO of BeeAudio, said. “So often newsletters take themselves far too seriously and are boring. The Nerdletter had the right balance of information and fun. Every day I found something new I wanted to learn about and every day I had a laugh.”

This spring, Van Hoven moved to Vayner Media and the newsletter is on hiatus. Looking back on more than a year of sending daily emails, he developed his own list of best practices in aggregation and distribution.

Be a Part of People’s Lives

Vitro started the Nerdletter as a way to maximize its PR and “be a part of people’s lives in a valuable way,” Van Hoven said. They knew any regular contribution they made had to be smart, useful, and different from other agencies’ efforts.

Van Hoven said he’d never been particularly drawn to any other agency’s newsletter, likely because they were too polished. To fit into a subscriber’s life on a daily basis, Vitro wanted to flow into the daily stream of water cooler conversation, both in terms of voice and design.

“We decided to do this really raw, almost Web 1.0-style, html thing,” Van Hoven said of the design.

In his approach to copy, Van Hoven wanted to be as efficient as his readers. While many web publications use titles as enticing invitations for a larger story, the Nerdletter was less concerned with click rates.

“In a case where I could sum up a story in the headline, I would, because I don’t want you to have to click,” Van Hoven said. “I want you to get the main thing out of this so you can go about your day. Speed is kind of key.”

Rather than pushing a larger agenda, Van Hoven aimed to maximize the value of the Nerdletter without asking his readers to do anything.

Measure and Adjust

Van Hoven measured all clicks using bit.ly, briefly launching a podcast to discuss the top links of the week.

“What I learned from this is that there’s a hierarchy of things people will click on,” he said. At the top of the chart, unsurprisingly, were cute animals and similarly light content. Videos were close behind, followed by whatever was relevant to a subscriber’s profession. Van Hoven adjusted the Nerdletter accordingly:

“At the top was the biggest, most showstopping news of the day, stuff that people have to know. From there, it was all the media and tech, like stuff that people should know, but they wouldn’t necessarily all be interested in,” he said.

“And at the bottom was all the light, fluffy, awesome stuff. I’d force them to sort of like go to the bottom of the page to get what they wanted. There was some sneakiness to it. What I found was that when we did that, overall everything else got better traffic. All of the click rates went up when we put the fun stuff at the bottom of the page.”

Appreciate the Smaller Circles

The Nerdletter grew glacially, something Van Hoven partially attributes to the “best-kept secret” effect. The list of links kept fast-moving people tapped into their industry and the world in general, and if they shared their source they might no longer be the most informed men and women in the room.

“It’s like, ‘I don’t want to tell anyone about this, because then they’ll [have it],’” he said.

But best-kept secrets have a way of getting out, and a newsletter without grand intentions is perhaps even more likely to end up in inboxes around the world. The Nerdletter may not have lasted long enough to gain much notoriety, but it reached influencers and, Van Hoven hopes, left a legacy to build on.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Suzanne Baran

Content marketing needs more than great writing to truly add value to your brand. Whether you’re producing videos, articles, or blog pieces, you need to ensure that what you produce has a clear place in your company’s sales funnel.

“A viable content marketing strategy relates each persona and target audience to each phase of the sales engagement cycle,” said Suzanne Baran, content strategy director at Saatchi & Saatchi LA.

Her experience spans brands and publishers, as she has spent the last 14 years working with brands such as Yahoo!, AT&T, Cisco, Scottrade, POM Wonderful, DirecTV, Teleflora, FIJI Water, California Psychics, AVG, The Hollywood Reporter, and Buzzmedia.

Here’s what she’s learned:

1. Start with a content engagement map

“Companies can learn from creating content that provides rich information.”

First and foremost, brand marketers need to jump into their content plans with clear revenue goals. A first step in that process is to create a map that links content back to your business model.

“Creating a content engagement map informs what type of content will serve the needs of a potential consumer,” Baran said. “For example, if Jane is unfamiliar with a retail brand, she might fall in the top of the sales cycle under ‘awareness.’ Jane may not have a pressing need or pain point just yet. Her only pain point is not being able to find the perfect pumps.”

Content will facilitate the introductory handshake to our brand, according to Baran.

“Instead of bombarding her with bombastic marketing materials, companies can learn from creating content that provides rich information, such as a photo gallery on spring’s hottest colors,” Baran said.

2. Appoint a visionary to lead with stride

“Brands often lack structure around content creation … buy-in is often a challenge, and the process is rarely collaborative.”

The most common reason why content strategies fall flat is simple — brands fail to jump in with clearly defined objectives. You need a person to take the lead to oversee planning, creation, production, and maintenance of the entire content lifecycle. Leading content strategist Erin Scime calls this individual the ‘Content Czar.’

“Brands need to empower their Czar with authority, accountability, and responsibility,” Baran said. “Often, companies do a poor job of creating this role and evangelizing the significance to internal and external facing stakeholders. Brands often lack structure around content creation. Outside resources will build their strategy, but buy-in is often a challenge, and the process is rarely collaborative.”

The key to success is flexibility.

“Brands are becoming publishers,” Baran said. “They are breaking news and require a nimble approach to publishing content across multiple platforms, especially social. Social influencers are becoming more convincing than other digital mediums.”

3. Get your measurement tools in place

“The most commonly used metric isn’t the most effective measurement tool.”

Baran encourages brands to get their metrics in order.

“Most brands I’ve worked with have multiple tools and disparate metrics, poor tagging, and the list goes on,” Baran said. “I advocate for Google Analytics and dashboards for content teams so that they have access data to inform their programming decisions.”

Don’t rely on a cookie-cutter approach to measuring success, she recommends.

“Conversions are defined differently by each brand,” Baran said. “The most commonly used metric isn’t the most effective measurement tool — pageviews and reach. Sign-ups, registrations, and information requests are widespread types of content marketing conversions. The least widespread type of conversion is video views and downloads, which is increasing in relevancy.”

It is essential that content marketers be data driven.

“I help brands by optimizing their content, specifically by identifying and delivering the right message for the right audience at the right time,” Baran said.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Quiz question: only large national brands can have powerful voices, right? Hint: read the title of this blog post.

Russ Henneberry

Online content can exponentially boost a small business’s reach – just ask the editor of The Daily Egg, a blog that connects its audience of marketers and designers with Crazy Egg’s user experience research tool.

“Crazy Egg is website software that gives you a visual representation of where users click and what they do,” said Russ Henneberry, Crazy Egg’s content manager.

“It is a great tool for improving the conversion of a website. We launched our blog, The Daily Egg, during the first week of November 2011, so the blog is only over one year old,” he said.”In our first year, we had half a million visitors. Traffic growth has been on average 10 to 15 percent month over month, and subscriber growth really picked up at the six month mark.”

In addition to managing Crazy Egg’s content marketing strategy, he also consults for a range of small businesses through his company, Tiny and Mighty. Here’s what he’s learned.

Content Yields Revenue: Just Follow the Data

Content is more than just entertainment, according to Henneberry. It’s a way to build an engaged community that indirectly yields leads, referrals, and sales.

“There are certainly aspects of business blogging that can be directly linked to revenue,” Henneberry said. “For example, on The Daily Egg, we have two calls-to-action to take the Free Trial of the CrazyEgg software for 30 days. These ads appear in the sidebar and at the top of each page on the blog.”

Henneberry recommends that blog owners carefully track the user conversion funnel.

“Clicks on these ads lead to a landing page,” he said. “The landing page traffic either takes the free trial or doesn’t. And those that take the free trial either become paying customers, or they do not. These sales are directly attributable to the blog.”

Value Beyond Immediate Dollars

But companies need to review more than direct sales.

“If direct sales were all you measured on a business blog, you would be missing a number of other benefits,” Henneberry said. “Some of which are very measurable like the number of inbound links, press mentions, or connections in social media. But other that are softer such as connecting with key influencers because you have a voice and an audience or building up social capital with customers and prospects in the market.”

Henneberry provides a rundown of important metrics to monitor on a monthly basis in this post.

Inspiration from the Community

When Henneberry needs inspiration, he turns to the strengths of his peers.

“In the software space, I really love what Unbounce is doing with their content marketing,” Henneberry wrote. “They make particularly good use of their blog as a place to teach existing and prospective customers the best practices of landing page optimization, which by the way, is directly related to the software they create. The folks at Unbounce know that teaching existing customers to be more successful with their product is great for retention. And educating prospective customers about the benefits of landing page optimization is great for generating new sales.”

Content marketing is as much about community and partner relationships as it is about great writing.

Bringing the Point Home: Niche Is Everything

Content gives small businesses a unique, competitive advantage, according to Henneberry.

“Big businesses are trying to act small online,” Henneberry said. “They want to ‘humanize’ their business by infusing individual personalities into their social media or blog content. Small businesses don’t have to act small. If you run a small business, don’t be afraid to let the individual personalities behind that business show in your content. For a great example of this, take a look at the blog from PegasusAblon, a real estate development firm, called Dallas Design District.  Notice how the personality behind the blog, Kendall Schiffler permeates the entire blog.”

Look beyond resources and cash, recommends Henneberry.

“Small business will find that there is a disadvantage when it comes to resources,” he said. “A small business simply won’t have the cash or manpower that a larger business has.  However, a small business can mitigate this weakness by taking on a small niche with their content strategy.  For example, a small veterinary office might try building a content strategy around the goal of driving more customers with dogs.  Or, to go even more niche it might be geared towards large dogs.  If you focus your efforts, you can get by on fewer resources.”

Rely on your most valuable asset — your brand’s authenticity and voice.

Ritika Puri is a paid contributor to the CrazyEgg blog, and she works with Russ Henneberry. She did not receive compensation or editorial direction from Russ or CrazyEgg for this post. 

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Brands creating content these days often steal a few tricks from features journalism to tell stories. Even more commonly, brands hire former journalists to run content marketing initiatives.

For journalists, how do the two tasks compare?

Some traditionally trained journalists say they worry that articles or blog posts seem less trustworthy if the content is produced by a brand, but in practice that tends to not be the case.

Brands such as Birchbox and Behance have created editorial destinations that are utility driven and meet the readers’ needs the same way features writing always has.

The Content Strategist talked to Sean Blanda, associate editor and producer at Behance, about his experience moving from journalism to developing content for a brand, and the similarities and differences in each.

The Content Strategist: How did you get into brand content and what did you do before?

Blanda: Before this, I was in Philadelphia working on a company I started with two friends of mine called Technically Philly – it’s kind of the TechCrunch for Philadelphia.

We covered startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital, but out of that, one of the ways we made money in the early days, was with what people now call content marketing for brands.

The more I immersed myself in it the more I realized that features journalism — not like hard news, political reporting, investigative journalism — but features writing for the features section, or the style section, that kind of journalism and content marketing are not that dissimilar. They have a lot to learn from each other. I felt the skills readily transferred between each one and was kind of excited, I saw this whole untapped universe of brands not really being met.

In respect to content, what are your goals at Behance?

Blanda: The goals with content is primarily executed through 99U, which is a conference and a blog we run. The tagline is making ideas happen — we get enough inspiration every day but how do we put our nose to the grindstone and crank out all the great work we can do.

The blog is to kind of motivate and get people to that message and hopefully they’ll buy a notebook, or attend a conference, or join the Behance network. It’s another way for people to get sucked into the Behance universe.

How is what you do now similar to journalism, and how is it different?

Blanda: I don’t view what we do at 99U as that dissimilar to features journalism. So, like reaching out to people, interviewing them, getting the takeaway, its just like service journalism, finding ways to help our readers. Instead of selling subscriptions, we’re selling conference tickets.

The only different is we play a small role in also trying to monetize the things we do. In a traditional old school journalism environment that didn’t happen.

[At Technically Philly,] I acted as a publisher, publisher writer and editor all rolled into one as a necessity. Because you only have a staff of three, it’s hard to do the traditional walled-off gardens that used to exist. So I think nowadays, you’re doing a disservice if you want to create content but you’re not figuring out ways to monetize — in a way that makes sense. Not just ads or a paywall, but what does your audience want that based on your expertise and access you can give them, to make their lives better.

What are the most important skills to succeed in the space right now?

Blanda: You can learn how to write, you an learn how to edit, you can learn how to interview, but the one thing I think that you need in this space is a constant curiosity to try out new ways of reaching your audience and new ways of providing for your audience.

So I think it’s really easy to just say to yourself, I’m a writer, and not really bother yourself with that. I think those kinds of people are going to be left behind really quickly. If you’re not afraid to experiement and try new stuff you’ll eventually end up on top — it might be hard in the beginning, but youll eventually end up on top.

 What’s one thing you’re working on right now?

Blanda: The biggest thing we have coming up is our 99U conference, which is kind of like a lecture series, a bootcamp for creating, to come and really get a butt-kicking in making their ideas happen. So we’re gonna have a few days of speakers and some action classes as well as studio session tours all throughout New York City.

We promote it through the blog all the time. We interview people who have spoken or wil speak on the site, record the lectures, and those are then streamed up on 99u.com so if you got to 99u.com/videos you can see the last three years, I believe.

Any industry-related pet peeves? 

Blanda: A lot of journalists don’t recognize the power your sources have. Sources can make their own platform now, and sources can build an audience way larger than the journalists sometimes. And I think a lot of people aren’t really atuned to that, there’s still a few people catching up.

Think about 37signals, they have their film blog Signal vs. Noise, they have their book series, they talk often at a lot of conferences, but do they really need the attention? Probably not. And I think that’s a rising trend we’re gonna see.

If [journalists] don’t react quickly to that kind of trend they’re going to get left behind. They need to provide value. Before the value of a journalist doing an interview was, Hey I’m going to give you my audience but what happens when your audience is bigger than my audience? Does it matter anymore?

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The Content Strategist talked recently with Jeff Misenti, head of digital content strategy of Fox News, for a look inside the successful news network.

Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital, outlined his views on the latest industry trends and looked back on the recent partnership he struck with Twitter that helped his company reach new highs on election night.

At the heart of the strategy is Misenti’s quest for “nuggets” to grow the Fox News brand beyond politics and into many other sub-topics the network covers online.

The Content Strategist: In the news business your content is your product. In that context, what is your strategy for building the news brand and how has it changed with the explosion of social media?

Jeff Misenti: Nearly six years ago when I started with Fox News, the Internet was different than it was today. There was a very clear distinction in what a news organization was.

Today, everybody is trying to compete for a position in the search engine. You want to differentiate yourself in that space. We want to make sure our editors report this content for the Internet.

We know people will go to a variety of sources once they’re on the Internet. Before our users seek other sources, we want to be sure to tell our audience that there is more information available on our digital properties and to start with our properties.

TCS: Fox News has a tremendous digital reach in addition to the cable network. What is the main purpose for all those digital outlets?

Misenti: It’s a vehicle for additional information as well as marketing. The digital properties are also mediums where we are trying to drive awareness for breaking news  as it happens.

TCS: Much of the Fox News brand is associated with political news, but on Facebook and Twittter the content is usually apolitical. Is that done by design?

Misenti: We are a news outlet and there are times that people think of us as just political news, but we do more. If politics is your thing, there is a way to just follow politics. There are also ways to follow generic news or specific topics.

We have handles for science and travel, breaking news and many other topics. What we do with the main account is push content from the sub-accounts. The content has to be snackable.

TCS: Tell us about the partnership you struck with Twitter on election night and how it helped drive your digital audience to new heights.

Misenti: On election night, we had 1.2 million concurrent visitors at any given time — more than 28 million unique visitors for the night when you combine all of our online units.

Our audience came to us from everywhere. We saw a ton of traffic from search, a ton from all the social networks. Sites like Drudge also drove an awful lot of traffic as well. That’s the power of the Internet: people find what they want. Even small bloggers will stand out on big nights like election night. If we’re really good at what we’re doing we find the little nuggets of information that appeal to all of these outlets and attract more audience.

Twitter provided us with trending hashtags, state by state analyses and trends — and Fox gave it back to viewers. The velocity of all that information came out in real time and we had to go macro. When you go micro, there are a lot of false positives … and we want to stay accurate and correct. Different hashtags mean different things to different people. After the election we continue to look at the information so that we can track down the information and further analyze it for preparation for future events.

TCS: How do the audiences different on, say, Twitter and Facebook and does that affect what kind of content you provide?

Misenti: On Facebook you don’t want to give too much. It’s a good way to get people to your site to do more things. The Twitter audience is even more challenging as you only have 140 characters to stand out in a crowd — it’s really about creating a real-time burst of interest.

TCS: Online news has changed a lot just in the past year with many respectable sites putting their content behind a pay wall. What do you make of the recent changes in the industry?

Misenti: I think monetization on the internet is in its infancy. The cable network had amazing ratings throughout the whole political season. Whatever we do with our digital extensions is a complimentary experience. You need a cable subscription to view our primary coverage.

TCS: How do you create a brand experience on the website?

Misenti: I would say that the digital mediums create an open palette for creating integrated advertising experiences. In many cases I would argue that awell integrated ad appearing on the website is probably more valuable than on and ad appearing on traditional media. Digital advertising puts people a click away from the advertiser’s site.

TCS: What’s next for FoxNews.com?

Misenti: I don’t have a crystal ball, but the goal is to create a consistent experience. We are a cable news network so our primary extension is video. This is why our first move around responsive experience was with our video offerings.

There are three experiences: one for a desktop and two for a swipe experience for a phone or a tablet. Whatever the new thing is, we want to give our users a great experience. It sounds simple but it’s not that easy.

Our other focus is to connect the pieces between television and the Internet. Connectivity is going to do nothing but get better and we have to appreciate that. We ask ourselves how do we let the users connect with each other? Digital extensions encourage connectivity and we are constantly thinking about how to connect the content and the users via interaction with things like live streaming events, conversations about news topics, etc.

TCS: What advice would you give an aspiring young content marketer?

Misenti: It’s not easy. We all need to appreciate that to some extent everyone is a content marketer for something. The medium I support is news. Brands are now creating really compelling websites that compete with news so so there are no more easy wins. It takes a lot of effort to be good at creating content that is compelling to users. Whatever type of content you’re involved with.

The internet is about fracture. You have to be uber-focused. If you’re going to write about speakers, don’t bury your lead and start off by writing about components. It’s important to follow the principals of journalism that are taught in school and be very specific and speak directly to your audience. You have to be uber-specific to a mass audience, and that’s a challenge. It’s a crowded space and content marketing is a shift in thinking for many brands.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Hearsay Social, founded by former Microsoft executive Steve Garrity and former Salesforce.com executive Clara Shih, assists large organizations and their employees with social media strategies.

The three-year-old company announced in October a 400% customer growth during the first nine months of 2012.

The Content Strategist spoke to Amy Millard, Hearsay’s VP of marketing, about its success, why all businesses need social media strategies, and what the future holds.

Why should brands have social media strategies?

Millard: In 2012, social media is no longer optional for businesses and brands.

Those who hesitate on developing social strategies will be left behind in the coming months and years as customers increasingly turn to brands on social media.

Why do you think Hearsay is so successful?

Millard: All the excitement in the market has inspired businesses to seek help in achieving success on social media.

Amy Millard, Hearsay’s VP of marketing

Hearsay Social software is architected for easy rollout to thousands of users, and the success and enthusiasm of our early adopters has helped spread the word.

We are also very focused on making our customers successful. That means not just integrating into their infrastructure but working with them continuously on strategy, campaigns, and training programs. Thanks to our early success in 2011 with customers like Farmers Insurance and 24 HourFitness, many companies continue to see us a top partner for reaching social media success.

Why should companies be creating their own content?

Millard: Whether your company sells insurance or beauty products, customers will turn to you to be a thought leader in your space. That means sharing relevant content about whatever you sell in addition to tidbits that express the culture of your brand, important elements that lead to a buyer choosing your product.

What types of employees are using your software — is it everyone or just marketers and social media experts?

Millard: Our customers deploy Hearsay Social across the entire organization. The marketing department uses our software for planning and executing on sophisticated multichannel social campaigns.

Hundreds or even thousands of salespeople (typically not social media experts) at any one organization use Hearsay Social to engage personally with their customers and prospects on social media. Compliance and legal teams also use our software to capture, monitor, and archive social communications in order to comply with federal and state regulations.

Why should brands be monitoring what people are saying about them online?

Millard: Brand monitoring serves several different purposes. From a regulatory and  brand compliance perspective, it’s imperative to monitor your social properties to ensure that they’re accurately representing the brand and not breaking regulations. From a sales and marketing perspective, social listening helps the business find and better serve its customers.

Do you work on other platforms aside from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter?

Millard: We were also a launch partner for Google+ Pages and now support Foursquare as well.

What social media platforms are going to be important in 2013? Are there any rising stars?

Millard: With over a billion users, Facebook will continue to play a major role along with other major networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. We see the social networks that are visual and leverage mobile, like Pinterest, as the next wave.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Earlier this year, Elizabeth Ippolito co-founded MatchStick Strategies, a content marketing firm for small businesses.

The company has worked with clients in software production, web hosting, and photography.

The Content Strategist talked to Ippolito about content creation, small business marketing, and using content marketing to reach goals.

The Content Strategist: What kind of content should small businesses be putting out? 

Elizabeth Ippolito: Content that is unique to their ideal audience and provides value to their audiences’ daily lives. It should keep them coming back for more. It’s really worth someone’s energy to figure out what channels their audiences are actually interested in.

The key would be to figure out where your audience is hanging out, whether it’s on Facebook, or if they’re more engaged with visual content or they like to read more. It’s about creating content that’s most relevant to them.

TCS: How do you figure that out for your clients?

Ippolito: A lot of what we do in the beginning of our process with clients is start to get to know who their audience is by having them answer questionnaires.

We figure out [the demographic's] ages, their qualities, and what brands they’re loyal to. There is no sure fire formula on how to [discover it]. If clients don’t have information about their audience, we ask them who their ideal audience is.

TCS: How have content marketing and brand publishing affected how small businesses promote themselves?

Ippolito: Everyone has a microphone these days. It’s given small businesses an equal ground to reach clients.

Content marketing doesn’t have to be expensive and in the age of advertising, it depended on how much money you had so you could get in front of your audience. Today, it’s about knowing your audience, providing value to them, and forging a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s helping small businesses in a big way. They couldn’t compete before.

TCS: What is the future of content marketing? 

Ippolito: It has evolved as tech and media evolved. I really hope that people continue to value sitting down and reading because it’s important.

But in the future we’ll see as technology changes that attention spans get shorter and people will continue to have to find new and innovative ways to actually connect with an audience.

The core value in content marketing is providing a value to someone and establishing a relationship. I don’t think that’ll change anytime soon.

TCS: How important is social media in all of this? 

Ippolito: Social networks are really important because that’s how the content gets distributed. A company can be remote and still be relevant in different areas just by connections they’re able to make online.

TCS: Is traditional advertising is dying out? 

Ippolito: I think it is. Traditional advertising isn’t really factoring into a consumer’s purchasing process anymore. They’re basing decisions off what friends and resources are saying. What we’re trying to do is become that trusted resouce.

TCS: Is content marketing as lucrative as traditional advertising?

Ippolito: It potentially will be. I don’t think that it is right now. There are big advertising agencies that are currently thriving because of their clients that have the traditional mindset. They see that they will get results from something like that. As the younger generation becomes decision makers then content marketing will be what is focused on.

For now, traditional companies will continue to lean on traditional advertising. They’ve been built up over time and have money to spend. New companies will begin building it up with content marketing and it will become lucrative.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Knowing who your customers are is crucial for a successful content campaign. Knowing where they are is no less so.

Geo-targeting, detecting a customer’s location and using that knowledge to personalize content, can be a powerful tool. For instance, Google uses it in search results, and Hertz changes its car rental website depending upon the location of the visitor.

The Content Strategist spoke with representatives from Marketwire and Tracx, two companies geo-target in their campaigns for brands.

The Content Strategist: How does geo-targeting help out brands and marketers? 

Eric Berkowitz, senior manager of product innovation at Tracx:

There are a couple ways to look at it because geo-targeting applies on a case-by-case basis. The customer team wants to know which stores or franchises they are receiving the most questions, complaints or issues.

People will complain to the telephone company about reception in certain parts of the country. [Geo-targeting] helps companies understand where their brand is doing well and where they need to provide more customer care. We can help you understand where the leads are coming from for new businesses and [how to] acquire new customers. You can figure out where you want to target your marketing activities.

Sheldon Levine, community manager at Marketwire:

It helps companies to get in touch with the people that matter specifically to them. If I have a store in Delaware, it’s pretty much pointless if my ads are reaching people in Miami. [Geo-targeting means] reaching out and actually touching the people you’ll get the most traction with.

There are two sides to it. [The first is] Facebook, where my profile says I live in Toronto so companies inside the Toronto area can target me and show what’s relevant to me in my area. The second one is hyper-geo-targeting. This means that I checked in on Foursquare, and a store across the street is able to see that. They will say to come and check out their store as well. They know for a fact I’m outside their store, so why not target me while I’m there to go inside the store. If they can hit me right as I’m walking by the store, there’s a greater chance I will act on it.

What sites do you use geo-targeting on?

Berkowitz:  It works across a lot of the different networks. The most geo-located information comes from Twitter or Facebook. Any piece of social content can be geo-located. It depends on user preferences and what they make available in their social profile. They can write their location on a blog or forum, or check in using FourSquare. Picture sharing services [like Instagram] allow you to geo-tag.

How can you tailor content from the geo-targeting information? 

Levine: From the geographic demographic, you’re able to learn about your community and audience. You can start making content that’s a little more relevant to them. If you’re a chain store that’s all across the United States but you notice that a lot of your community is from New York, you can start doing content pieces that have a little bit more to do with New York. People reading your content will be able to identify it and create that connection between themselves and your brand.

Should people be skeptical of brands being able to do this? Or is it a good thing? 

Berkowitz: There are best practices employed to leverage this kind of data in a way that’s friendly and useful, and will ultimately benefit the brand and customer. As long as the brand is thinking about and respecting peoples’ privacy, and they’re engaging with people in smart and relevant ways, it should ultimately make the customer more satisfied.

It just makes sense that that’s the way a brand should look at things. If you are in a city and you get certain ads from a business isn’t in your city, you think it might be a scam. If you tweet about how you need a camera and Canon, Nikon, or Sony contacts you and helps you find a store, that’s a good thing. In the end if you use this information wisely, it’s going to give you a more satisfied customer base.

Levine: There’s a two-sided coin to this. One side is yes, it seems a little bit freaky that brands might have all this information about you. But the flipside is that they can tailor content and offers a lot better to people because they know this information about them.

Do you want all these companes to have all this information about you? [Maybe not], however, because they have it, they’ll be able to understand you as a consumer a little bit better.

Anything you’d like to add?

Berkowitz: [With geo-targeting], we want to empower brands with information so they can understand their customers and the information relevant to them. I think you can expect to see brands using analytics that allow customers to make better decisions for the future.

Image courtesy of Olivier Le Moal/shutterstock

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently