dallas marketing
May 17, 2018
5 Ways to Build a Useful Editorial Calendar
Executing on a content marketing strategy is a lot of work, but when you combine the efforts of a well-managed team, the results can be downright magical. The challenge, of course, is co-ordination - each contributor has conflicting priorities, and their own, unique style. To keep everyone on the same page you need an editorial calendar.
In its simplest form, an editorial calendar is a document that communicates what you plan to publish, when you'll publish it, and who'll handle each component. But if you choose the right tool it could do so much more - an editorial calendar can also help you clarify the purpose of each piece of content and improve collaboration within your team/s.
But there isn’t one solution that’s ideal for everyone - the trick is to identify a tool that suits the complexity and frequency of your publishing schedule, and that your team will actually use.
Here are five ways to build an editorial calendar, and the pros and cons of each approach.
1. Using a Spreadsheet as an Editorial Calendar
Spreadsheets are great for many organizational tasks, and that includes editorial calendars. Anyone with a computer can access some form of a spreadsheet, and as long as you keep it simple, most people are reasonably comfortable using one.
Spreadsheet style editorial calendars are best for content teams which publish once or twice per week (or less), and it’s useful to set them up in a common environment (like Google Docs or OneDrive) so you can share them with your team members and collaborate on changes.
I sometimes see editorial spreadsheets that have been set up to look like an actual calendar - personally, I find that this limits the tool’s utility. Instead, I prefer to use the traditional row and column layout, so I can manipulate and sort the data when I need a different view.
The information included in an editorial calendar will vary from one organization to the next, but it will usually look something like this:
In addition to the columns shown here, it's often helpful to include other information. For example, I like to add the search volume for my target keywords and links to relevant research.
Pros of a Spreadsheet Style Editorial Calendar:
- Low barrier to entry. Most people have access to and feel comfortable using a simple spreadsheet.
- Limited adoption challenges. Team members can incorporate this tool into their existing file structure and workflow.
- Simple to set up.
- Some collaboration capabilities (if the spreadsheet lives on a shared drive).
- Few limitations. You can use a spreadsheet to do almost anything.
Cons of a Spreadsheet Style Editorial Calendar:
- Spreadsheets require manual maintenance. If your entire team doesn’t commit to using this tool it will become dated.
- Limited scalability. Spreadsheets are great for small teams who publish once or twice a week, but they can become unwieldy if your publication frequency increases.
- Permissions must be carefully managed to avoid unwanted changes to this critical document.
- Limited workflow collaboration capabilities.
2. Building an Editorial Calendar with Google Calendar
If your team uses Google Calendar, setting up a separate editorial calendar in that same environment is another viable option.
From within Google Calendar, click on the plus sign next to “Add a friend’s calendar” and choose “New Calendar.”
Then select your new calendar and click on the three vertical dots to the right of the name to edit the settings and share the calendar with your team.
Now you can populate the calendar with your content plan and keep everyone informed of the publication schedule.
Add alerts, files and links to each entry, so that your authors will have access to everything they need to complete each piece.
Like spreadsheets, using a Google Calendar to manage your content production schedule is best when your publishing frequency is light - although the tool is familiar and there are some collaboration capabilities, it can become frustrating to those who publish a lot of content.
Pros of Using Google Calendar as an Editorial Calendar:
- Low barrier to entry. Google Calendar is free, familiar and easy to use.
- Limited adoption challenges. Those who already use Google’s suite of tools will find it quite natural to integrate this option into their workflow.
- Simple set up.
Cons of Using Google Calendar as an Editorial Calendar:
- If your team doesn’t use Google Calendar they may not be willing to start now.
- Limited scalability. This is a very simple solution. Using Google Calendar to manage your editorial process can become cumbersome if your publishing frequency increases.
- Limited collaboration capabilities. Complex editorial workflows would benefit from a more robust tool.
3. Integrating an Editorial Calendar into Task or Project Management Tools
If your team already uses a productivity solution, you might be able to build an editorial calendar right into your existing tool. This is a terrific option when several team members work on each piece of content - the right solution can help you manage that workflow and keep everyone informed.
There are many such tools, but I prefer Asana and will use it to illustrate this point.
Asana organizes work into “projects” and the individual “tasks” related each project. You can then view those tasks as a list or on a “Kanban” board - here's an example of an editorial calendar project in Asana that has been set up using the Kanban method.
In this example, a card represents each piece of content (or task) you intend to create. As work is completed, you move the cards from left to right to visually track your progress. But the real magic happens inside each individual card.
Within each card, you can break down tasks into subtasks, and assign them to individual contributors. For example, if you need a graphic for your next blog post, you can assign that subtask to your graphic designer, and that person will then get an alert (with the requested due date). They can then either accept the assignment or request a change.
You can also attach files and communicate with your team right within the tool - this means you'll have everything related to each piece of content in one place.
This is just one example of how you might use a productivity tool to create an editorial calendar and workflow - the list of pros and cons will vary based on the tool you choose and how you use it, but here are the pros and cons of using Asana.
Pros of Using Asana as an Editorial Calendar:
- If you already use the solution you can build your editorial calendar right into your existing task management workflow. This negates the need to juggle documents or manage a complicated solution adoption process.
- Collaboration features make it easy to communicate the status of individual pieces of content and their associated tasks. This will help you avoid bottlenecks.
- Premium features add rich project management functionality that improves the tool’s utility.
Cons of Using Asana as an Editorial Calendar:
- If your team doesn't use a common tool for collaborating on tasks, you'll need to agree on a solution and go through an adoption process.
- Most productivity tools were designed to manage a wide variety of projects and tasks, which means that they may lack features of particular interest to content managers.
- Building an editorial calendar into your productivity solution should work for a moderate production schedule but may challenge your ability to scale.
If you like this concept (especially the Kanban method), but don’t think Asana is right for you, Trello and Monday are good alternatives.
4. Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar
Spreadsheets and collaborative to-do lists are perfectly fine for managing the content needs of a small team, but you may find that you need a more robust editorial calendar solution as your program matures. Airtable is a good option for people who like using spreadsheets but need something more.
Airtable is a cloud-based application which offers the deep functionality and relational aspects of a database in a visually appealing spreadsheet format. The tool enables you to collaborate with team members, attach files and segment data - a basic version is available for free, while feature-rich upgrades are $20 per user, per month.
This tool is useful for managing a rigorous editorial schedule. There is a learning curve, but Airtable provides use case templates to get you started. Here's a screenshot of their digital content calendar template.
I choose this template because it shows how Airtable can work for a large, prolific team. They also provide simple templates for smaller scale projects, such as the management of the editorial calendar for a blog.
Pros of Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar:
- Superior collaboration capabilities when compared to spreadsheets.
- Provides robust relational database functionality, combined with easy ways to view and sort the data. This flexibility satisfies spreadsheet fans while also accommodating visual types with calendar, Kanban and gallery views of the same data.
- Offers integrations with many popular applications. This makes it easier to build the solution into your workflow.
Cons of Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar:
- Significant learning curve, particularly for those who are not familiar with databases.
- Airtable isn’t mainstream yet, which means you’re adding a new tool to the mix and may encounter resistance.
- Spreadsheet power users may expect certain functionality that isn’t yet available. This will require patience. The solution is becoming quite popular and is adding new capabilities all the time.
- Like a spreadsheet, manual updates are necessary to keep the tool effective.
- This solution wasn’t designed specifically for marketers. Marketing-centric features are present but aren't necessarily a top priority.
5. Adopting CoSchedule as Your Editorial Calendar
CoSchedule is a content planning and execution tool designed for marketers. You can use it to build an editorial calendar for all your content and campaigns, while you can also use it to collaborate with contributors and schedule social media posts, all in one place.
The company offers a wide range of pricing options - basic capabilities for bloggers start at $40 per month. The most advanced level of functionality (for enterprises) is $1,200 per month.
Planned content is presented on a calendar, which can show everything or a filtered view. You can manage each piece of content using a customizable, collaborative workflow, so that you always know where things stand. You can also set up a social sharing plan for each piece of content and use it to populate a built-in social media scheduling tool.
Pros of Using the CoSchedule Editorial Calendar:
- Designed for marketers.
- Useful for managing all types of content – blogs, resources, social media content, graphics, white papers, etc.
- Handles the entire content production process – from ideation to publication to social promotion.
- Doubles as a scheduling tool for social media posts. You can set up the entire social sharing plan for each piece of content as part of your content creation workflow.
Cons of Using the CoSchedule Editorial Calendar:
- Yet another tool to adopt and integrate into your workflow. It’s great if all you work on is content, but it doesn’t accommodate the need to manage other types of tasks (the company recently implemented an integration with Zapier, which may make this issue easier to work through).
- Analytics data is limited to the impact of social posts.
- The calendar format is the only option for viewing your plan - you can't convert it to list form.
- Calendar data resides in the tool. You can't extract it for further analysis. For example, if you want to conduct a content audit, you'll need to build an inventory of your content separately.
Choosing an Editorial Calendar Solution
The system you select for documenting and collaborating on your editorial calendar will have a big impact on your efficiency. Defining your requirements, and exploring the solutions above, is a good place to start if you’re working with a small or medium-sized team. There are other options that may be more suitable to your situation, but we'll save that discussion for another day.
The rise of Douyin is particulary interesting
Live streaming and short videos have become a greater focus for marketers and media agency professionals in China over the past year, according to a survey by AdMaster and TopMarketing.
In 2017, 22% of respondents said this medium was one of the leading social media marketing tactics they used. Fast forward one year later, and 62% of respondents said they use it.
While many are focusing on other tactics as well—including influencer marketing and social CRM—the shift in short videos and live streaming is a significant one.
So why the refocus?
Since the end of 2016, short videos—which typically last for about 15 seconds to a few minutes—are one of the fastest-growing mobile app categories in China.
Consumption of short video content is simply more suitable for consumers seeking bite-size entertainment in today's on-the-go lifestyle. So it's no surprise that marketers are focusing their attention on short video apps as the ideal storytelling medium to convey their message, whether it is through endorsements from key opinion leaders or advertising.
Among the many short video apps, the rise of Douyin—also known as Tik Tok in some countries outside of China—is particularly interesting.
Originally launched in September 2016 by parent company ByteDance, Douyin saw its daily active users more than double between December 2017 and March 2018, jumping from 17.4 million to 45.6 million, based on data from Jiguang.
March 2018 data from Cheetah Mobile found that Douyin users are primarily female (60.7%), and 66.7% are between the ages of 18 and 24.
Douyin's concept is simple. Users can produce video of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to their favorite tunes, and share it on the app or other social platforms. Users can also apply filters and other editing features to video.
In terms of ads that might be most effective on short video platforms, a March 2018 Tencent survey found that both male and female short video app users are most tolerant toward those that feature creative and interesting content, while they are least interested in ads that feature "traditional" celebrities.
Article Written by: Man-Chung Cheung - Emarketer
After nearly two years since its launch, Twitter's emoji targeting remains a new concept for advertisers.
First launched in June of 2016, Twitter’s emoji ad targeting gives brands the ability to connect with people based on the emojis they include in their tweets. Even though the ad-targeting feature has been around for nearly two years now — arguably a lifetime on Twitter — some consider emoji targeting to be a fairly new concept when compared to the platform’s standard ad-targeting options.
“4C has had hundreds of clients use emoji targeting, but we work with more than a thousand clients in total, so it’s still a relatively small group of advertisers that are experimenting with the feature,” says Aaron Goldman, CMO for 4C Insights, “We expect this number to grow as brands see positive returns from this precise level of targeting.”
4C is one of six Twitter certified partners that offers the emoji targeting campaigns. The data science and marketing technology company offers a self-service platform for advertisers running Twitter campaigns. Emoji targeting is one of several targeting options available via 4C’s platform.
Can emojis deliver results?
The CMO says one of his agency’s clients in the quick serve restaurant industry that targeted different types of emojis saw engagement rates increase 260 percent.
“Meaning the number of people who responded to the ad went up 2.6 times over the advertiser’s traditional ads. Typically a 10 percent lift on an ad is a solid result, so this is a huge increase,” says Goldman.
Like most ad-targeting, emoji targeting can be layered on top of other criteria, like age, interests, or location. The CMO says emoji targeting is still a relatively new concept compared to standard targeting criteria like demographic or geographic information that marketers have been using for decades.
“Ultimately, it helps advertisers get more precise about who they’re reaching and the best time to engage them, because an emoji paints a more colorful picture of their audience beyond black-and-white demographic and geographic information,” says Goldman.
Getting the context right
JD Prater, director of growth marketing for AdStage, says he sees Twitter’s emoji targeting as essentially keyword targeting.
While at a previous digital marketing agency, Prater oversaw a Twitter ad campaign that used emoji targeting paired with phrase-match keywords to drive website traffic to local weather pages for a weather app.
“We created ad groups targeting various weather-related emojis and segmented them by weather conditions: rainy, snowy, sports, etc. And we utilized Promoted Tweets for creative that also used the emoji in the ad copy,” says Prater.
Prater says the goal was to target people using weather-related emojis, and deliver a tweet that encouraged them to view their local weather forecast. The campaign used a number of emojis, including an umbrella 
, rain cloud 
, and snowflake 
, along with activity-related emojis like a person playing golf 
.
, rain cloud , and snowflake , along with activity-related emojis like a person playing golf .
“We wanted to capture people in the moment of conducting an activity, or planning for an activity. Then, hopefully encourage them to view their local weather conditions for our Promoted Tweets.”
Prater says the campaign results were okay, but its performance was not strong enough to continue running emoji-targeted ads.
“The client had specific CPC [cost-per-click] goals, and unfortunately, these campaigns performed at a higher threshold,” says Prater, “The results weren’t necessarily bad for the industry, but for this specific client, the CPCs were too high.”
One issue Prater’s team encountered with the emoji targeting campaign was determining the context by which people use emojis.
“For example, during our campaigns, we found some people using the [golf-club swinging] emoji to also mean ‘throw shade’ in a conversation. That’s definitely not a conversation we want to run ads on — or take the [umbrella] emoji, which we found gets used in a variety of contexts as well,” says Prater, “People might ‘ weather storms’ or ‘you can’t on my parade’.”
[golf-club swinging] emoji to also mean ‘throw shade’ in a conversation. That’s definitely not a conversation we want to run ads on — or take the [umbrella] emoji, which we found gets used in a variety of contexts as well,” says Prater, “People might ‘ weather storms’ or ‘you can’t on my parade’.”
Prater says it’s difficult to understand the meaning and context by which people are using emojis, and that it’s much easier to derive meaning from keyword patterns. He believes, in most cases, advertisers are better off targeting specific keywords over emojis.
“Right now, people use emojis to communicate a lot of different ways, and there’s not really a universal standard.”
A throwback to the ‘Mad Men’ days of advertising
While Prater believes it will be tough to use emoji targeting ads to drive conversions, he does think advertisers looking for engagement, or to help grow follower numbers, could benefit from it.
“At the end of the day, advertisers are getting more savvy with their audience targeting thanks to specific and relevant data Facebook and LinkedIn offer,” says Prater, “I don’t see a reason why performance marketers would choose emojis over behavioral and interest based targeting.”
4C’s Goldman says emoji targeting isn’t necessarily best suited to specific types of campaigns, but is most effective when applied strategically and genuinely.
“Some brands want to get people to click and take an action right away — targeting athletic wear to people who have used football or basketball emojis, for example,” says Goldman, “Other brands simply want to create engagement with people in a certain frame of mind, like someone who has just tweeted the fire emoji.”
According to Goldman, emoji targeting pushes marketers to discern the emotional-intent behind an emoji.
“In a lot of ways, it’s a throwback to the ‘Mad Men’ days of advertising, when marketers were forced to get into the heads of their audience to understand what would lead someone to use a specific emoji, and therefore what marketing message will best match that level of emotion.”
When asked what a large-scale emoji-targeted campaign looks like, Goldman says its still tool early tell.
“Because emoji targeting is new, and advertisers are still experimenting with it, there is no scale for campaigns when trying to determine what a ‘normal-size’ campaign looks like.”
Goldman points out that there are 2,666 emojis in the Unicode Standard since June of last year, and the potential scale of unique emoji targeting ad campaigns is tremendous, “The use of creative software makes this scale achievable for advertisers.”
In the end, Goldman believes emoji targeting should be used like any other targeting — to make the ad more relevant for the audience.
“Just because a marketer might know a consumer’s Twitter handle, location, and favorite emoji, doesn’t mean all of that information should be used in the messaging of the ad,” says 4C’s CMO, “Consumer experience should always be an advertiser’s first priority. When in doubt, don’t be creepy!”
Written by: Amy Gesenhues - Marketing Land
January 12, 2018
What is Deep Learning? Here's Everything Marketers Need to Know
The machines are here.
You may have heard rumors about artificial intelligence (AI) potentially taking over our jobs. And the question is: Should you be concerned?
In my opinion, we should be excited.
AI -- especially “deep learning” technology -- brings new opportunities and innovation in the way digital marketing, sales, and customer support are handled.
But what is deep learning? How does it work? And how can it be applied to marketing and sales in your company?
What Is Deep Learning?
Deep learning is a discipline within AI that uses algorithms mimicking the human brain. Deep learning algorithms use neural networks to learn a certain task. Neural networks consist of interconnected neurons that process data in both the human brain and computers.
Neural Networks in Advertising
Let’s assume we are an online car dealership, and we want to use real-time bidding (RTB) as a mechanism to buy ad space for our product on other websites -- for retargeting purposes.
RTB is an automated process that takes place in a short time frame of under 100 milliseconds. When a user visits a website, an advertiser is alerted, and a series of actions determines whether or not that advertiser bids for an ad display. Have a look at the image below:
Source: Periscopix
In RTB, we use software to decide if we want to bid for a certain ad -- the software will make a decision by predicting how likely the website visitor is to buy one of our products. We call that "buying propensity."
In this instance, we'll use deep learning to make this prediction. That means our RTB software will use a neural network to predict the buying propensity.
The neural network inside our RTB software consists of neurons and the connections between them. The neural network on the above image has only a handful of neurons. In reality, a digital neural network has thousands -- or even millions -- of neurons and connections.
In this scenario, we want to find out if a certain website visitor is likely to buy a car, and if we should pay for an ad to target her. The result will depend on the interests and actions of the website visitor.
To predict the buying propensity, we first choose several “features” that are key to defining this person’s digital behavior. In our example, those features will consists of which of the following four web pages were visited:
- Pricing.
- Car Configurator.
- Specifications.
- Financing.
Those features will influence the output of our neural network -- or, essentially, our conclusion. That output can have one of two values:
- The website visitor is interested in the product, or “ready to buy.” Conclusion: We should display an ad.
- The website visitor is not interested in the product, or "not ready." Conclusion: Do not show an ad.
How the Neural Network Functions
Let's have a closer look:
For each input, we use “0” or “1”.
“1” means the user has visited the webpage. The neurons in the middle will add the values of their connected neurons using weights -- or, more simply put, they define the importance of each visited webpage.
This process continues from left to right, until we reach the “output” neurons -- “ready to buy” or “not ready,” as per our earlier list.
The higher the value of the output, the higher the probability that this output is the correct one -- or the more accurately the network predicts the user’s behavior.
In this example, a website visitor looked at the Pricing and Car Configurator pages, but she skipped Specifications and Financing. Using the numerical system above, we get a “score” of 0.7, which means that there is a 70% chance this user is “ready to buy” our product.
So, if we look at our original formula, that score indicates the conclusion that we should buy the RTB ad placement.
Training of the Neural Network
Now that we know how a neural network functions, let's have a look at how to make sure our output neurons are calculated correctly, in order to make the right decision.
The challenge is to come up with the correct “weight” factors for all the connections inside the neural network, which is why it needs to be trained.
In this context, “training” means that we feed the neural network data from multiple website visitors -- things like visitor features (which web pages users have visited), as well as indicators of their eventual purchase decisions from us (which are labeled as "yes" or "no").
The neural network processes all these data, adjusting the weights of each neuron until the neural network makes appropriate calculations for each person within the training data. Once that step is done, the weights are fixed, and the neural network can more accurately predict the outcome for new website visitors.
The Future of Deep Learning
Democratization of AI
AI is quickly finding its way into marketing tools that we use every day. Take, for example, the AI-powered Chatbot builder by Motion.ai (part of HubSpot), which allows you to easily create and publish your own chatbot.
Another example is Dialogflow, a platform from Google that lets you build a chatbot for your company or service.
It certainly doesn't stop there. AI can assist with the setup of advertising campaigns, hyper-personalize emails, optimize lead scoring, categorize and escalate customer issues, and actually help you with anything that requires data processing or orchestration.
Deep learning can be applied in any area of digital marketing, provided that you have a sufficient amount of “training” data. The challenge is typically to extract data from your various marketing tools -- that's where data integration platforms like Blendr.io will be crucial in connecting your data silos when you start experimenting with deep learning and AI.
The Future: AI ... That Builds New AI
Google explains that the process of designing neural networks often takes a significant amount of time for development and experimentation, because all of the neural network layers have to be crafted by people. That's why Google invented AutoML: AI that can build new and better AI algorithms.
Imagine what that type of technology can bring to something like marketing automation, for example. The AI will be able to build additional, customized AI algorithms that will learn and automatically optimize nurturing campaigns, for example.
Though deep learning may sound complicated, it's a process that, much of the time, boils down to math. Neural networks “learn” in a manner similar to humans: by viewing many examples, and discovering the commonalities among them.
Once the neural network is trained, it can perform complex tasks and a certain level of reasoning. Deep learning and AI can be integrated into many aspects of digital marketing and sales automation. The machines are not coming -- they are already here.
Originally published January 05 2018, updated January 08 2018
Written by Niko Nelissen
photo by: H Heyerlein - unsplash
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
