Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Do You Have Resources For “creating 'tool-based' Content”?

Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/2/2004 at 3:59 PM ET 500 Points
I can spend days searching for unique, specific, timely, relevant, high quality, informative content to broadcast via email to our client/prospect list (client side b2b marketing executives). Today I ran across this article “Creating Content: The Easy Way” by Steve Shaw. https://tinyurl.com/6wlrx

Shaw suggests reprinted articles (available online), invitations for content and syndicated Content resources such as:
https://submityourarticle.com/syndicate/
and
https://freesticky.com/stickyweb/default.asp

The problem is these sites typically do not satisfy our criteria as well as just putting in the Google time and eventually finding something that will work.

My question (finally) is what are your experiences with finding great content? Do you have web-based resources you can share? Or a story that provides some insight into this problem?

Thanks for your responses to this question

- Steve
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 12/2/2004 at 4:16 PM Accepted
    After reading Mr. Shaw's min-bio at the end of that article, I'm not sure I'd want to take *any* advice that he offers:

    "Steve Shaw creates systems and software for effective e-marketing. His powerful PopUpMaster Pro software creates popups that beat the popup blockers and can significantly increase your conversion rates."

    Great. Just great. Nothing like ramming content down the throat of people who have made it clear they don't want it.

    I believe his article discusses keeping your Web content fresh, however, while you seem to be interested in content for an email newsletter. Frankly, if all you plan to do is provide a digest of content that you found elsewhere on the Web, I'd seriously rethink that plan.

    I know that's an easier way to go, and I'm not suggesting that I've never referenced a great article that I read somewhere else, BUT--your email newsletter is your opportunity to tell people what YOU think, to give YOUR opinion on the business issues of the day.

    You can certainly use other articles as springboards to get your mind going, but I really think an email newsletter with original thought and content (even if that means it's half as long) will be better received than an aggregation of stories and thoughts that are already out there.

    My $0.02. YMMV.

    Paul
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 12/2/2004 at 4:18 PM Accepted
    Hi Steve,

    Are your b2b executives in a small, specific niche? Maybe that is the "criteria" you mention.

    I ask because maybe I'm missing something from reading your post, because typically for both b2b & b2c I find just the opposite, and I have a problem choosing and then editing what I think will be most relevant.

    What magazines target the niches of both the executives and their customers? What associations?

    Have you asked any of them where they get their industry information from?

    It sounds like it is a real pain for you so I'm just curious if you can shed any more light on the problem, maybe I'm not understanding it clearly.

    TP
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/2/2004 at 4:49 PM Author
    Thanks for prompt input Paul.

    Regarding “Frankly, if all you plan to do is provide a digest of content that you found elsewhere on the Web, I'd seriously rethink that plan.”

    The answer is “no” that’s what we are planning to avoid, which is why it’s so difficult to find something good. In many cases, we have created tools for marketers (see at https://www.schraff.com/adv/helpdesk/ )

    The problem being it cost too much to create these tools on a bi-weekly basis. To narrow the question, we are looking for similar tools “developed by others” that would be good finds for our target. Are there any resources out there for this?

    We have also sent articles by others and articles written by us. This has been somewhat effective, but not as effective as the interactive tools.

    I totally forgot about Blaine’s related post in July
    https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=2054

    In it, davidathaley said “ I'd suggest: free information and lots of it, most of it written by you.”

    I think the articles written by us on a specific subject for our audience is the way to go when we want to send an article. Again costly.

    So, our tactic is to send links to tools with some additional information about how to best use the tool, what the tool really does and the like.

    We will continue to develop tools inhouse, but hopefully not everytime.
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/2/2004 at 5:04 PM Author
    Hi Tim,

    The target is senior executives with technology and medical device companies in Southern California. And yes it’s the relevancy and uniqueness of the content (tools) that will get their attention.

    Most of them are aware of the their industry sites and the marketing sites (including marketingprofs.com, I have recently been sending individual emails with links to this site)

    Thanks for the questions,

    - Steve
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 12/2/2004 at 7:55 PM Accepted
    Hi Steve,

    Check out these sites:

    https://www.zeromillion.com/

    Although it gives the impression it is just for entrepreneurs, they have some useful stuff that senior-levels might find useful, go to the marketing link and drill through it.

    Also here:

    https://www.marketingnpv.com/

    I hope those help, if not, they could be good future resources if you don't already know about them.

    TP
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/2/2004 at 8:07 PM Author
    thanks Tim, I'm on it. SB
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 12/2/2004 at 10:59 PM Accepted
    Ah, okay!

    I didn't fully digest your headline, and when I read your question without it, I thought you were just looking for a source of articles that you could just repackage as your own "newsletter."

    I can certainly see that developing the "tools" that you're talking about would be time- and resource-intensive.

    Just to be sure I understand, are you looking for things such as can be found here?

    https://www.wdfm.com/publish/marketing_calculators/index.htm

    https://marketing.about.com/od/marketingcalculators/

    https://www.givetogetmarketing.com/calculators.html

    https://www.db-marketing.com/dbm/calc/default.asp

    I don't claim to have known about these things before, of course. If these are the kinds of things you're looking for, this link may help:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=marketing+calculators

    I'm interested to know if I'm getting warm or if I still don't quite get it--something that my wife tells me happens often.

    Paul
  • Posted by telemoxie on 12/2/2004 at 11:56 PM Accepted
    I have subscribed to quite a few email (E-mail?) newsletters - there is one I actually read occasionally. The rest are happily forwarded to folders.

    I understand your desire to save yourself time, but can we look at this issue from the other perspective for a moment? In today's information overloaded world, what benefit will a person get from receiving, and maybe even reading, this newsletter?

    I can't hold a candle to Paul and Tim and Marcus and some others on this site when it comes to eMarketing, and I'm sure I'm showing my ignorance (hey, I'm just a telemarketing guy) - but have you considered implementing a content management system on a web page, and sending a friendly personal note with some generic news of interest and a link to that page? This way, I could solve my "information overload" problem - by simply clicking on the link from your email, I'd be transported to a page with just the sort of news and content I'm personally interested in.

    I'd have some sort of a dashboard (hey - I noticed that I typed "I" would have a dashboard - it probably would have been more correct to say that "you" would have a dashboard - but since this process is so personalized to me, I'm already feeling some connection to "my" new site) - I could choose the type of info I'm most interested in, I would know that I no longer needed to spend hours in Google to stay current - my buddies at Schraff have me covered.

    When I visit MarketingProfs, there's a little message that says, "Welcome back, telemoxie". I always enjoy seeing that little note - in a small way, it's personalizing the page just for me. If you take this to the next level, you might end up putting a bit more time into research, but you might end up with a great number of loyal readers.
  • Posted on 12/3/2004 at 5:09 AM Accepted
    Hi Steve,
    I have some marketing tools (all Excel based) plus a white Paper on customer retention on my web site and I would be happy to have you use them if you give me the appropiate credit and a link to my site. Have a look at them, and if you want to use them contact me. The site is www.marketware.biz.
    I hope this helps
    Pat Divilly
    CEO MarketWare International
    www.marketware.biz
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/3/2004 at 2:41 PM Author
    Paul - My bad, sorry for confusion (I added ‘tool-based’ to the headline after your post). Originally I was thinking about content in broader terms i.e. articles, roi calculators, and interactive tools. But after Tim’s post and your post and some reflection, I realized I was looking for a way to create or make available interactive tools without having to involve our programmers (meaning short of grabbing php programming off web and repurposing it for a new tool) So this lead me to Googling for web-based services that are very user friendly and flexible enough to allow a non-techie like me to play around with and develop original interactive tools customized for from several to hundreds of our client/prospects needs and interests. Admittedly, this is a tall order and probably a long shot find on today’s web.

    Tim – Thanks for the links. The marketingnpv.com site has several tools such as a “competitive radar” tool that show some promise.

    Dave – yes, simplified content management (and development) are the answer and they come in many shapes and sizes as discussed in previous questions on this forum. A dashboard and the functionality you described are on my wish list. Having conducted telemarketing myself, I say be proud telemarketer, thanks for input.

    Pat – Excel-based tools make a lot of sense for this problem. Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.

    Thanks for everybody’s input, I’ll leave this post open over the weekend for others to chime in.

    - Steve
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 12/6/2004 at 5:27 PM Author
    Found this “customize a calculator” site for financial services marketers. It’s a good example of content development using custom calculators, albeit not of much use for marketing services. I couldn’t find anything similar for interactive tools like decision-maker tools where the user enters information about their situation and gets some kind of quick analysis.

    https://www.timevalue.com/Tools.htm

    Thanks to all for the input,

    - Steve
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