108: Brands and hate groups, the truth of freelance pricing, Slack ruining our work lives, and 50k B2B articles
Team, listen up. (It's softball season and I'm in coach-mode.)
On Sunday night I'm flying to Seattle, WA to sit down with some really talented executives at the HQ of a company that you can probably deduce from its location. I'll be asking some pointed questions about marketing, leadership, life, and love (maybe not the latter two) and doing it all on camera.
Videos to come.
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter,
1. Answer the public - bookmark it now, you're welcome
2. How should brands respond if used by hate groups?
3. Money + misdirection: the shadow side of “charge what you’re worth” pricing culture
4. Is Slack ruining our lives?
5. Analysis of over 50,000 B2B articles
6. Quote of the week "rolls wrinkled eyes"
Let's do it.
1. Answer the public - bookmark it now, you're welcome
On a panel event we held this past week with Boston Content (which led to some serious shade and some amazing buzzword bingo), one of our panelists suggested a great tool, AnswerThePublic. It uses the auto suggest results from Google and Bing to help you learn what specific questions people are searching for on a given topic.
For example, type "unicorns" into the site, and it generates a range of questions being asked about unicorns. You'd do well answering questions in a blog about why they fart rainbows, or how they fly. (You know, if that was your jam.)
Beyond questions, the site also lists prepositions (for, with, near, etc) - "digital marketing for real estate agents" or "digital marketing for startups."
This is by no means an exhaustive SEO strategy, but a helpful source of content ideas, and really fun to play with. $99/mo for pro, the free version covers UK only and limited queries (I get no kickback. Pinky swear.)
Try it!
2. How should brands respond if used by hate groups?
Should brands like Mastercard and Stripe step in when their payment services are used by white supremacist groups?
This week, activists from SumOfUs successfully forced Mastercard to hold a vote by shareholders on a proposal which, if passed, could see the company creating an internal "human rights committee" that would stop payments to such groups.
Some brands take clear steps: In November 2018, PayPal banned donations to an anti-Islam activist, saying that its services wouldn’t “be used to promote hate, violence, or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.
My take: Taking no action to block hate groups from using their services indicates a brand is taking no responsibility for what their tools enable. This is not an uncommon refrain lately (see Facebook + the 2016 election.)
But, where should the line be drawn?
Let's think about it from a business POV. Today, consumers have options, and are increasingly choosing brands that align with their values (even payment providers and other B2B choices). In that context, inaction is a bit ridiculous. Why would you choose not to be clear that your brand is aligned with the belief that 'white supremacists are bad?' This is not a controversial stance, this is basic human decency.
Be honest about the implications of your tools, if not to sleep at night, then to prevent the inevitable risk to your brand reputation when word gets out about your inaction. Consumer activism is a real threat to most modern brands.
Ex:, quoting Nandini Jammi (one of the organizers behind successful corporate accountability campaign, Sleeping Giants): "If this shareholder vote succeeds, this has huge implications for Stripe, which as a financial partner to Mastercard would be contractually obligated to cut off white nationalists too."
3. Money + misdirection: the shadow side of “charge what you’re worth” pricing culture
If you are freelancing, you're struggling with pricing. Read this piece by Hillary Weiss.
"As with most one-liner encouragement tropes on the internet, we willfully ignore the nuance of “charging what we’re worth” at our peril."
Takeaways:
Understanding what you can charge requires a lot of context.
There are more ways to measure success than sales numbers.
Businesses exist to turn a profit. Why are we mocking people for trying to be responsible with their numbers?!
4. Is Slack ruining our lives?
"Communication seems like a good thing until you have too much of it. Because it’s so easy to talk to our colleagues using workplace software, many of us are typing too much. And not all these missives are helpful." - Rani Molla in her excellent piece in Vox about the dangers of "productivity tools" making us wildly unproductive if we don't have a clear strategy, and rules in place, about how best to use them.
5. Analysis of over 50,000 B2B articles
Buzzsumo published this excellent resource for marketing teams, featuring insights from an analysis of 50k B2B articles, including:
Video and Infographic content were more evergreen — with higher backlinks and social shares over time than all the other content types.
The best content type by the number of shares were “Success” articles ("success" in title), w/ 2X the number of shares.
The best content type by number of backlinks are those with “Guide” in the title, gaining an average of 10% more links per article.
5 is the most common number used in listicles
Read more.
Note: these are what worked across 50,000 articles. They may not be what works for your brand, your buyers, or your industry.
Note... x2: What "works" is relative to your business goals. $$$
6. Quote of the week "rolls wrinkled eyes"
From this Tweet from Vikki Ross, a copywriter who worked on beauty brands for years.
The latest reminder that media/marketing simply can't allow women to look our age for fear it would crash the $216B global anti-aging market. C'est la vie.
Vicki is quoted in another interview saying: "I worked in beauty for 8 years. That was the most creative job I ever had, because you can't actually claim that the beauty products do anything."
Happy Saturday.
(And thanks for reading, even through wrinkled eyes.)
Katie Martell
Website | LinkedIn | Twitter
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Event calendar:
PLAY 2019 from Brightcove is May 14th-16th, 2019. Let's talk video and how it moves buyers from apathy to action. Join us in Boston?
BONUS: Watch my video trailer here for my talk.
San Diego, here we come, for ConquerLocal 2019 - an event all about driving digital success for local businesses from Vendasta, June 10-12.
I'm speaking at Content Marketing World, September 3-6 in Cleveland, OH
I'm back at INBOUND 2019 in their new startup marketing track - let's talk about the 7 deadly sins of startup marketing, and how to avoid them!
More to be announced, but if you'd like to book me to speak, or emcee, you should. I'm a hoot!
