2. “ Today I am convinced that the only thing that saved those 1,268 people in my hotel was words. Not the liquor, not money, not the UN. Just ordinary words directed against the darkness.” - Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
3. What’s A Blog? (And does the world need another one?) Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
4. What’s A Blog? (And does the world need another one?) “ A regularly updated website wherein texts or articles of one or more authors are shown in a reverse-chronological order, meaning the first one is the latest one. Authors reserve the right to post works they consider pertinent.” - MasterBase, Delivering eMarketing Results Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
5. Yes. The (Study Abroad) World Needs This Blog. Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
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8. % How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions? Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc.
9. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc. 5% They Don’t How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions?
10. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc. 20% Very Little How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions?
11. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop 60% Somewhat How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions? Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc.
12. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc. How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions? 15% Very Much
13. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop 75% Influenced by blogs We’re writing to them. Research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, Inc. How Much Do Blogs Affect Your Purchase Decisions?
14. % Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop 16,465 Facebook fans A Little Social Math 3,230 Twitter followers
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20. But Why Are We Here Today? Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
21. “ When we plan for the time to do content right, we can actually produce quality content that’s meaningful to our audiences. For any organization, that would be an immediate online competitive advantage.” - Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
22. What makes for a good blog? Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
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27. “ How do we do that?” Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
28. By giving them what they want Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
29. “ Web content is worthless unless it supports a key business objective or a customer in completing a task.” - Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
30. So how do we know what they want? Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
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33. Make their choices easy Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
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37. Use Words That Smell Good Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
38. Information Scent Theory People hunt for words like hounds seek foxes and bees seek pollen. Institute for Shipboard Education – Content Workshop
Exciting stuff, right? No wonder most people launch a blog with so much fanfare and then let it wither and die on the vine.
Dan Zarrella of Hubspot basically turns data into more data, crunches social media numbers and this was a question on a survey he conducted with over 12,000 responses
Impressions = any time our brand appears in someone’s facebook or twitter newsfeed it’s visible to their friends and followers, meaning the entire network has the opportunity to see it, can’t measure exactly how many do, but the potential is great, especially with it happening on a regular basis
Now we’re talking
Accomplishing these three bullet points is easier said than done, especially when you consider that people engage with a book for several days at a time, a movie for up to 2 hours, a TV show up to an hour and a blog post for maybe 5 minutes.
Accomplishing these three bullet points is easier said than done, especially when you consider that people engage with a book for several days at a time, a movie for up to 2 hours, a TV show up to an hour and a blog post for maybe 5 minutes.
Our community answers many questions and so do we, but a lot of those questions are indicative of bigger issues;
also Radian6 – as you all post more content, I’ll be able to use our Radian6 and JitterJam accounts to support your efforts and suggest subject matter to help fill your pipeline with writing material
So your late coming home, you’ve been asked to stop and get milk on your way, you come to the milk display like most people come to a website: pressed for time and unsure of a lot of details. So you freeze and think, “Man, I thought I knew what I was here for and now there are WAY more options than I expected.”
They follow a scent until it goes cold and then they start over; think of it as digging a lot of shallow holes, coming back to the surface and repeating that action until you strike something that looks promising and keep digging; scent = trigger = keyword
Based on our collective knowledge of the subject matter, are there any words we could add to that list?
Another way to help people make a quick decision or feel like they’re on the right track is to write visually, what do I mean by that? Well…
Calvin knew without knowing what the opposite of writing visually is and he also knew that it’s standard practice
Use shorter sentences and paragraphs and already, you start appealing to the online eye without the first word ever getting read
Communicating with descriptive words in context is a shortcut to getting your point across. Stop sign is a great example of that.
Pretty much speaks for itself
Think like an outline when you’re putting a post together and use the headings as subheads. Make them descriptive of what you’re writing about in that section to support scanning behavior
If your headline says one thing and the image accompanying your post says another, consider that shallow hole abandoned
By about the fourth line here, I’ve completely lost interest and focus and I’m not even halfway through the paragraph. Also consider the fact that lines 2-6 make up one sentence. Not good. How could we make this easier to read and digest more quickly?
Same information, perhaps taking up a bit more real estate, but online real estate is free so the goal is to communicate effectively, not cram every little nook with content. Space is not precious in your blog post, communication is.
Just because you know someone else has covered the same topic as you before on a different blog, doesn’t mean you should skip it. It means you should come at the topic from a little different perspective and give readers a new take that will be helpful
We’ve all come into contact with stories from students, LLLs, faculty, staff, or anyone else that can help illustrate the points we’re trying to make in blog posts. Use them. Our expertise is a result of cumulative experiences. Remove the names of those involved and generalize it a bit. Combine two similar experiences to make one point. Just rely on your historical knowledge of the program.
Know what doesn’t get links? Jargon does not get links or comments (at least not comments we’d like). It gets made fun of with games like Buzzword Bingo
