Mediaboss Marketing

Effective marketing demands the skills to customize, humanize and repurpose content at scale using ... [+] AI.

Today, 82% of marketers actively use content marketing. Why is content king? Because it not only helps build brands and communicate both value propositions and brand values, it cultivates trust and converts interest into sales. High-quality contentand lots of itis not only good for business, its essential.

As content marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuck (Gary Vee) predicted, this decade has become a game of volume and targeting. Brands that can generate moreand more strategically targetedcontent will disproportionately pick up market share. Instead of trying to reach 10,000 people on one channel with one piece of content, Vaynerchuck recommends that marketers create 10 different pieces of content for 10 channels, each focused on reaching a specific group of 1,000 people in a way that will actually interest and engage them. The result is both more, and more effective, content.

Brands now need to create content frameworks that differentiate by platform and hone messages according to ideas that may already be resonating for target audiences on those channels. Social media video platforms such as Tik Tok and Instagram, compliance with the ADA, voice-search optimization and personalized content experiences are surfacing as key trends.

Happily, marketers can compete in this race for quality and quantity of content without a team of creators and an unlimited budget. The trick is to focus on creating better content and effectively repurposing it.

Optimize SEO and extend reach to new customers on a variety of platforms. Evergreen content can be expanded, updated with new data, upgraded with visuals, and translated into infographics, videos, animation, or e-book offers. Invite audiences to share their own experiences. These are not only SEO wins, they create better engagement.

The bad news is that good writing is scarce. In fact, companies waste $400 billion on bad writing each year in the U.S. alone, from ineffective social marketing and sales copy to poorly written internal communications. As a result, remedial writing training is costing over $3 billion a year.

The good news? Following a few simple rules can quickly improve the quality of written content and A.I. can handle most of the rest, from creating custom feed algorithms, predictive analytics and researching trends to effectively customizing and repurposing content.

In this episode of The Groove podcast, Kate Bradley Chernis, CEO and co-founder of Lately, shares the rules she has followed to nearly double sales conversions in her own company and to build Lately, a technology that uses A.I. to learn brand voices and turn long-form content like blogs, videos, and podcasts into dozens and even hundreds of pre-tested social posts.

A former marketing agency owner, Chernis tells me that the idea for Lately was born out of the strategic thinking (and smart approach to repurposing) that allowed her to produce an avalanche of content and achieve a 130% increase in ROI for the retailers content marketing program, year-over-year for three years.

Other inspiration for founding Lately came from Chernis experience as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. There she learned about the neuroscience of music and how the brain compares new songs to its own playlist. The brain searches for familiar touchpoints it can find in order to index that new song in the library of your brain, and its the same in writing, she explains. It's your job as the author to give your audience the familiar touchpoints that trigger nostalgia, memory, and trust.

Chernis insights into what drives emotional connection, combined with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand-building, sales and marketing expertise, has helped make Lately a game-changer. Gary Vee needs no convincing. He has created an entire Twitter channel fueled 100% by Lately thats yielded a stunning 12,000 % increased engagement.

The starting point for all the content Lately generates is Katelys Writing Rules, which Chernis followed to grow her monthly recurring revenue by 240% in 12 months with no paid ads, and no cold calls or emails. As she explains, through these rules, Lately learns from me first, and then it learns from my brand, our 98% conversion, and then it learns from you and all of our other customers, and your best practices.

First, write like a boss. Avoid using weak words like I think or I feel, or minimizing the impact and authority of messages as just a note, or checking in so as not to impose. What I found, especially in venture capital meetings, is that, the moment I say I think something, I totally kill my authority, because I should know it, she says.

Avoid inviting your audience to check out a site or podcast in favor of a more purposeful CTA. Give the reader a specific reason to read more, watch, listen, or respond.

Read what you write out loud; if it feels awkward saying it, it feels awkward reading itand its a great way to catch mistakes.

Do unto others by always having compassion for your audience. Like us, they are busy, stressed humans; they dont enjoy getting cold emails or reading material that is not useful and to the point.

Listen to the other six of Katelys Writing Rules on the podcast, where we also explore how she puts her experience as a DJ to work by applying the neuroscience of music, and how, by delighting clients who then spread the word, a great product like Lately can serve as its own new marketing.

More here:
Produce More Powerful Content With These 10 Rules And The Power Of AI - Forbes