Remember, ideas not content? If you don’t, click the link and then come back over here.

Great to have you back! I spotted a couple of tweets from Jane McGonigal (@AvantGame) that reflect this simple principle:

Applied towards your online brand experience the point is: Your content marketing strategy should be focused on ideas with a purpose for action not for consumption.

So if you’re planning on starting a blog about cooking, think about ‘why?’ you’re doing it (purpose of your blog) before you decide ‘what?’ content you’re going to publish on it. You stand a better chance of your content being shared and therefore being talked about if you create content for action not consumption. This simply means that, as Jane so clearly puts it, your content should help people achieve some goal that makes their life a lot more interesting.

Here’s a BIG idea again: It’s not what and how much you publish, it’s what people do with it that counts.

P.S. If you don’t know who Jane McGonigal is I recommend you watch her TED video below, I guarantee it’s well worth your time!

Does this resonate with you? What’s the BIG IDEA behind your content?

Content with a purpose is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Researchers found that popular stories often inspired a sense of awe by tackling a broad topic and requiring the reader to approach the subject from a fresh angle. Researchers say these articles are popular because they create emotional connections between the person sending the article and its recipient. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” the researchers said.

A picture is worth a thousand words and if I could present these findings in visual way I think the picture below speaks for itself, doesn’t it make you go AWE?

Create AWE and your content will spread is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Want to know what your natural persuasive way of communicating is? Take the F Score Fascination trigger test from Sally Hogshead and find out, it takes less than 2 minutes! Sally Hogshead is the author of Fascinate where she uncovers the 7 triggers that brands use to persuade or captivate us and the test is designed to tell you which triggers you use to persuade on a consistent basis.

I took the test a few moments ago and found out that my primary fascination is Mystique, which knowing myself isn’t that far off and neither are the rest of the results to tell you the truth! Although there is no detailed action plan after taking the test you do get some insights on where and what you can improve on.

I was fascinated with the ideas from the accompanying Change This ebook that I have the book incoming and can’t wait to read it…the trigger of lust won me over!

Follow Sally on Twitter and let her know your result!

Which triggers are you using to persuade or captivate? is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

The formula to successful networking: Give to receive. Create relationships. Quality not quantity.

Ask yourself:

If I disappeared tomorrow who would care?

Seth Godin: How many followers you have doesn’t mean S**T is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Kira Wampler from Intuit talks about how Intuit created word of mouth by connecting their customers around a topic they cared about. It all stared with a simple yet powerful question: How do you elevate the conversation for small business owners?

To connect our customers we need to understand what’s important to them:

It’s not about going after the latest social media fad; it’s about building a program around a subject important to both you and your customers. For Intuit, they’ve built communities around the challenges small businesses face. Once you’ve found the common issues that connect your customers, you can start to look at the tools and tactics you’ll need to bring these folks together.

Amazingly they got positive metrics and ROI from this simple initiative…

Key takeaway: Before you start any word of mouth initiative, ask yourself:

What do they really care about?

Social media tip: Focus on what your customers care about is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

As humans one of our favorite things to do is talk about ourselves. Me, me, me, me! It’s a natural human tendency to do so. In business this is even a bigger problem because our ability to create new business depends on how we communicate (what matters) the benefits of our product or service to our audience.

When all we do is push our message of how great we are to prospects, we block others out because we’re not telling them why they should care and so it’s harder (if not impossible) for us to influence them. What they really want to hear is ‘what’s in it for me?’

I just finished reading a fabulous book written by Mark Magnacca called So What? How to communicate what really matters to your audience.

It provides an invaluable framework we can use to communicate what matters to prospective audiences when they visit our websites, when we’re networking or just when we meet new people.

Formula for answering ‘What do you do?’

Mark gives some great advice in actionable steps. Something I particularly liked was the So What Positioning Statement Generator:

Step 1: Determine the issues your clients and prospects face.

Step 2: What are the 3 things you do to address these concerns?

Step 3: Choose the most relevant of these 3 concerns and then the best answer from Step 2 that addresses it.

Once you have these put them in this format: Do you know how…(insert primary concern). Well, what I do is (insert what you do to address the concern).

Here’s how one person used this formula:

Mark: What do you do?

Floyd: Do you know how many people don’t like the process of buying a new car because they don’t like dealing the salespeople?”

Mark: Yes.

Floyd: Well, what I do, for $295, is take people through a 15-point process designed to help them determine the exact right car for them, and then I go with them to the dealership to negotiate the best price.”

That’s it! Didn’t that example get your attention? As you can see the framework is very intuitive. If you want to see this framework in action watch Mark Magnacca apply it to Andrew Warner in an interview.

Key takeaway: If you want to be better at persuading and gaining interesting from prospective clients, I honestly suggest you read So What? I’ve already sent a few copies to my team and other colleagues.

How to communicate what matters to your audience is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Twitter is talk of the town right now and the topic that gets the most attention is the art of the retweet. Now we have people coming up with formulas on how to structure your Tweet so that it gets retweeted, not to mention scientific research on how to get retweeted.

If you want to get retweeted and this is way above your head, let me put things a little more simple. Let me explain.

In their book Made to Stick authors Chip and Dan Heath propose a framework that can help us communicate our ideas and make sure people remember them. Using their SUCCES framework (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible,Emotional, Story) to guide our thinking it also important to remember the “7 words or less” concept.

In 1956 cognitive psychologist George A. Miller suggested that humans have a powerful short-term working memory, it appears to have finite capacity. The formula he came up with to explain this capacity was 7+/- items. Decades later is was determined to be roughly 2.5 seconds of information.

What this means is that in order for your message to remembered and be worthy of mention (retweeted), you need to structure your messages in 7 words or less.

Twitter is a great example of a tool that puts this concept to the test. With only 140 characters to write your message, you have to get to the point. To date the best formula that I’ve found to work is to keep it short and say something interesting. Nothing complex about that!

With consumers getting bombarded with messages that want their attention every second of the day, getting their attention is a challenge. But using the SUCCES framework to get our ideas across is in a short (7 words or less), simple and concrete way we stand a better chance at getting theirs and everyone’s attention.

Key takeaway: People are better at remembering messages with 7 words or less.

Is there a different formula you follow to get more retweets?

Convey everything in 7 words or less is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency