Lori Nelson-King

Put on the spot, Jake Clare asked me what B2B content stood out to me. First thing that came to mind? The folks over at AudiencePlus, specifically their Goldenhour conference. Here's why it stood out to me: (1) Value add stage sessions - no thinly veiled product pitches. Focused on sharing frameworks and results from things that practitioners had tested themselves. Very much felt like we were learning from peers. (2) Content capture overload - 1 camera operator for every 20 attendees. Different angles. A hybrid version of the conference was airing for digital attendees. End result was 114 pieces of content that they got from a 1 day conference. (3) Perfect mix of attendees - it felt like the who's who of Linkedin. Audienceplus did a fantastic job of curating the types of people that others would want to learn from. To craft a narrative that those that are attending are the pioneers in modern marketing. Many left the conference feeling as though they'd look back, reflect and say "I was there at the first Goldenhour" TAKEAWAY Anthony has worked this playbook at previous roles (Gainsight Pulse comes to mind) and knows that it can transform an entire company's marketing machine. I've heard customer conferences can take years to be ROI positive. Most companies won't invest in one because of it. Leading companies understand that not all marketing needs to tie back to ROI. And that you can build a movement and a shared version with your raving fans that will ultimately lead to the desired results. Similar to bamboo, it takes 3 years to grow in the ground, before it sprouts and grows at an insane rate. Growth happens gradually, and then suddenly. 

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Is LinkedIn helping advertisers succeed? Or is it just pushing them to spend more? In the latest episode of The Lucky Orange Show, AJ Wilcox reveals a major way LinkedIn's default campaign settings can hinder your ROI. AJ also advises brands to avoid these pitfalls: → Using LinkedIn's Audience Expansion → Getting overwhelmed by ad types and targeting options → Fearing CPM/CPC numbers compared to Meta Check out the full conversation over on the Lucky Orange YouTube or Spotify channels. 🍊 . . . . . . . #linkedin #linkedinads #luckyorange #linkedintips #marketing

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I attended a great panel this morning at Denver Startup Week called "How Hiring Fractional Talent Can Drive Quick Wins for Small and Medium Size Businesses." I'm about to hit my one year anniversary of becoming a fractional SEO Director, and a lot of what the panel discussed really resonated with what I see as the value I bring to my clients every day. Some of the key advantages of working with fractional talent include: - You are able to hire higher caliber talent than you may be able to afford if you were to hire a full-time employee. - You get a brutally honest voice in the room. We aren't politicking or angling for a promotion. Your success is our success too. - You get quicker execution from fractional talent. Onboarding is shorter, meetings are fewer, and there is more intentionality around our goals and work because our time is more limited. - Your organization benefits from us working with other clients. We will get you out of the "we've always done it this way" mindset and provider fresh perspectives on how others have approached your challenges. If you're looking for fractional SEO or content strategy help, or you are interested in getting into the fractional world, my DMs are open! #denverstartupweek #fractionalleader #fractionalhiring #fractionaladvantage

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Two questions: A) What are you doing differently this year to create non-replicable content? B) Have you read about the content gap yet? We talked to 400+ marketers (of all stripes) to understand how the role of content is changing within GTM. 👀 https://lnkd.in/eNKjaN-Z

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I ran an executive roundtable for Optimizely at the Gartner Marketing Symposium a couple weeks ago, where a group of 30 or so marketing executives discussed SIX risks of generative/editorial AI. (I'm trying to make a term happen, BTW: "Editorial AI." The use of AI in content generation goes far beyond just writing words. "Generative AI" is too restrictive.) Here are the six risks I identified, which we discussed -- ⚠️ INACCURACY: content generated by AI will say something wrong, or legally bind you to a position that's not correct ⚠️ EXPOSURE: it will become obvious that your organization is using AI to create content (whether or not this is a bad thing is up to you, I guess); closely related to this is DISCLOSURE risk, meaning you will fail to appropriately disclose the source of AI content (thanks to a roundtable participant for carving that out) ⚠️ REGRESSION: your generated content will "regress to the mean," meaning it will become average or worse -- it will start to sound like everything else ⚠️ MORALE: the morale of your employees will suffer when responsibilities/duties they want (creating content, for example) are taken from them, or colleagues start to lose their jobs because of AI ⚠️ ATROPHY: you will over-depend on AI to the detriment and neglect of your overall process; when the AI playing field becomes even again (when everyone has it), you'll have taken a net step backwards ⚠️ PRE-EMPTION: other people's AI will "repackage" your content for delivery in their own context, depriving you of engagement (this is different than the others, because this isn't related to YOUR internal use of AI, just use of AI in general) What am I missing? (Also note that I'm not condemning any use of AI. Successful adoption and incorporation of anything simply requires that we consider and mitigate risks.)

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Hot take: You CAN'T build brand evangelists or a long-term successful content strategy on the hype cycle alone. It's painfully transparent to customers when content suffers from "shiny object syndrome". Think about how everyone became a generative AI expert last year. You can't growth hack your way to expertise. Yes, think about impact and virality, but make sure the long-term OUTCOME is what you want to achieve. Otherwise, short-term results look good at board meetings, but ultimately don't show up on the balance sheet. I offer end to end content strategy and writing that works for now AND the next generation of content. Are you a creative marketing leader who wants to keep achieving their goals in a sustainable way? Message me.

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Google’s third-party cookies phase out leaves no room for mismanagement of data. 🍪 As marketers we must now explore alternative strategies to achieve desired results and address the challenges posed by limitations in data tracking.   To increase conversion, marketers need to look into varying tactics to target customers across content, search and paid looking to ways to offer new users the choice to submit personal information.  Partnership, influencers and review sites are also worth exploring to compensate for the loss of reach via third-party cookies.  At Exclaimer, we've witnessed a growing trend among our customers who are increasingly leveraging personalisation including email signature marketing, to facilitate personalized, one-to-one communication. This approach not only nurtures trust between sender and recipient but also fosters stronger relationships.  Focusing on creating a strong human-centric brand and the personalization of content at scale are no longer luxuries but necessities for standing out. How are you navigating the zero-click world? ⬇️ 

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We’ve distilled key insights from HubSpot's 2024 Social Media Trends Report (HubSpot, Bryna Corcoran) into easy-to-digest highlights tailored for small business owners. No, this report isn't hot off the presses, but we were recently analyzing its insights again (they're GREAT!) and thought it would be helpful to provide some key takeaways: 🔥 YouTube is Now King: YouTube has overtaken Facebook and Instagram for brand engagement, with long-form video content leading the charge. Tip: Create a video series that answers your audience’s FAQs. If you’re in real estate, create a series called “Real Estate 101,” covering topics like "How to Get Pre-Approved for a Loan" or "How to Choose the Right Neighborhood." 🔥 Creators Hold the Power: Consumers trust influencers for product recommendations. With 1 in 5 people now identifying as creators, the creator economy is booming. Tip: Reach out to micro-influencers by offering them free products or services in exchange for a genuine review. If you own a fitness studio, offer local fitness influencers a free class and ask them to share their experience with their followers. 🔥 AI is Revolutionizing Content Creation: 80% of marketers are using AI to streamline content creation and make it more targeted. Tip: Use AI tools like ChatGPT or Jasper to repurpose long-form content into social media snippets. Take a blog post and break it down into 5 bite-sized social posts, each highlighting a key takeaway. 🔥 Social Media Shopping is Booming: Social commerce is up 40% year-over-year, with platforms like TikTok and Instagram becoming key shopping destinations. Tip: Set up Instagram or TikTok Shopping and create a “limited-time offer” post. Create a post featuring a product with a discount code valid for 24 hours, driving urgency and quick conversions. 🔥 Short-Form Video is Essential: Short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are driving significant engagement and ROI. Tip: Create a weekly “Tip Tuesday” short-form video series. If you’re a restaurant, post 15-30 second videos of quick cooking tips or recipes to keep your audience engaged. 🔥 Authenticity is Key: Consumers want real, relatable content—63% say authenticity drives their engagement. Tip: Share a “day in the life” video that gives your audience a behind-the-scenes look at how you run your business. If you own a boutique, show the process of selecting new items for your store. 🔥 Humor Wins: Humor and memes are outperforming traditional, polished content, driving higher engagement. Tip: Use a trending meme format, but add a fun twist related to your industry. If you run a coffee shop, create a meme around the phrase "But first, coffee" with a funny image of a chaotic morning that leads to the need for your product. Want to discuss how to apply these trends to your business? Let’s chat! #SocialMediaTrends #ContentStrategy #AIinMarketing #InfluencerMarketing #ShortFormVideo #HeatwaveMedia #SmallBusinessMarketing

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I interviewed multiple B2B marketers at INBOUND and gave them a few choices of topics. Most selected video as what they wanted to chat about. Now I’m diving into Goldcast’s next research report which will be all about video. As I’m developing this survey, I’d LOVE to know what questions you have around video. What do you want this research report to reveal? The comments are open to any and all ideas. So far, I’m most interested in who handles video content, what is in a marketer’s video tech stack, what the video workflow looks like, and how much time it takes to produce video content. If you want to be on the first dibs list for when the report comes out, comment below with a 🎥 or shoot me a DM!

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Content Marketing has a PR problem. At least that's what "The State of (Dis)Content" survey is telling me. "[we are] viewed in an org as a service provider, not a strategic partner." "My company refuses to see the strategic role that written content can play." "[When] you also have strategic goals to meet, most of the times the goals are pushed aside for yet another "urgent" ask from sales or execs." Thing is... content is on the front lines of all inbound and bridges the gap between company and customer. So what can content marketers do to become seen as more strategic partners. I've got my own thoughts that I'll share in the final report, but I'm curious to know what you think?

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Hot take: The engine that fuels your B2B marketing growth isn’t AI. 🤖 It’s positioning. If you don't position your product correctly, you’ll struggle to be remembered – even when buyers have a need for your offering. Here's what CMOs today should know 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q02KcFFn0

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Content marketers and partner managers have more in common than we think. Our work is often misunderstood and, because of this, is pushed off into silos. At the same time, expectations from our GTM counterparts remain. This puts us in a pickle: the relationship and communication between teams are strained, but we are still expected to perform. To add to the complexity, just like partnerships, many GTM leaders know that content is important. They're sold on the idea that meaningful content is one of the ways to earn trust in the market. So, what the heck is happening? Beam Content 💡 recently published a report that surveyed 400+ GTM leaders to figure out where the disconnect is. I found this page fascinating. 👉 Product, demand gen, and CS teams were the least satisfied with their content counterparts, with CS being the toughest critics. 👉 Sales teams are more likely to rank their content as average. Here's what this tells me: ▶ Content marketers are focusing on quick wins over building trust. ▶ Content marketers aren't tapping internal teams as SMEs. ▶ Content marketers are storytelling, not story-finding (particularly with their customers and how they win with the product). ▶ And, content marketers aren't tapping their ecosystems. Now, this isn't solely on content marketers—there must be a willingness from their GTM counterparts to execute. But if this report tells us anything, it's that other departments WANT to participate in content creation. It's up to us to leverage that want. By tapping into the full network of our internal teams, customers, and the partners that support our customers, we can find and highlight more robust stories that bridge the disconnect with our Rev teams: ⭕ We create more trust (and therefore demand) by aligning ourselves with the partners and influencers our buyers already trust. ⭕ We create more value by enabling our customers and buyers with use cases that reflect how they are actually using our platforms: as a connected entity in a much larger tech stack. ⭕ We send better-qualified leads to our sales teams by focusing on the overlapping audiences we share with partners that we KNOW work well with our customers. ⭕ We better support our CS teams to drive retention by finding the stories and pain points that matter most. By putting the customer at the center and expanding content sources to include the ecosystem that surrounds them, everyone wins. I love this quote from Chelsea Castle in the report: "I’m a big believer that your work is only as strong as your cross-functional bonds. Content marketing needs to be integrated within the entire business… Being integrated with other teams in the org is just so important to achieving everyone’s goals. It’s a rising tide.” Yes! And it's as strong as our bonds with our wider ecosystem—bonds that should also support business objectives. That's nearbound, and it makes content one of the most important tools in our arsenal.

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I wrote a weekly internal newsletter at HubSpot for years. Everyone knows that. What most people don't know is what that newsletter DID. I've talked before (and written) about how the WIN was more than just a fun little internal newsletter with links to cool wiki posts and pictures of adorable coworkers (and sometimes their dogs). Okay, it was that. And. It was a powerful means of conveying our cultural values to every employee at the company. Of putting our values into action, in their inboxes. Week after week. Not by spelling them out in the banner or sidebar or anything like that. But by showing them what it looked like to express those values in writing. In what you said. And how you said it. Your values as expressed in content. You know what that is? It's your voice. Your voice is your values. Or heck, it should be. You tell the world who you are with every word you write. Internally. Externally. In wiki posts, blog posts, renewal emails. With every word you leave in. Every word you leave out. In all my years of defining, documenting, and training people how to write and design in a consistent voice, nothing has ever come close to being as effective as writing a weekly newsletter that people will actually read. Hard facts: Nobody, but nobody, cares about your style guide. But they care about their own lives. And If you write about THAT, and about other things they care about, and you do it in a clear voice, over time, it sticks. Eventually, that voice gets stuck inside people's heads. It becomes like a song we're all humming, but we don't really know why. And when a salesperson writes the next email, or a support rep responds to the next chat, or a marketer writes their next blog post... it all becomes part of the same song. I won't pretend this was all part of some masterful plan from the start. It was mostly a happy accident, the way it turned out. But I learned so much from that accident. As one often does. I learned that people will read things if you make it about them. I learned that people will read things if it makes them smile. It also helps if it's a bit playful and fun. And pictures of dogs. They will read it for that. And that shared act of reading? it can make your voice scale. Better than that, it can make your voice sing. I loved chatting with MK Getler-Porizkova about all this and more on the latest episode of the Loop & Tie 🎁 podcast, The Connected Brand. Link to the full episode in comments, and anywhere else you love streaming your pods.

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<rant> For most of my life, I made my living as a writer. I've never particularly been a "grammar N*zi," and I've always welcomed linguistic evolutions that rankle other, more prescriptive, writers. But. I've noticed a recent trend that drives me bonkers. This one. Y'know, where every sentence in a LinkedIn post or Substack note is a standalone paragraph? I get why people do it. It encourages people to click through to see the whole post. And it's a cheap way to make each sentence seem important. And maybe, for some, it makes it easier to read. (I can't even fully commit to the bit, so I'm going to stop this nonsense.) I'm all for brevity, conciseness, and directness. After all, I'm a journalist. But while the occasional one-sentence paragraph does lend more weight to the idea it conveys, writing an entire post that way has the opposite effect: In order for emphasis to be effective, it has to stand in contrast to everything around it. The Pixies made a whole career out of that approach to music. But whatever your reason for separating all your posts into single-sentence paragraphs ... Just stop. </rant>

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“Can you make an editorial calendar? It can be quick.” 🫣 I’m guessing every content marketer has been asked to create an editorial calendar in their role. Watch my video to see 4 things I’ve done wrong when making editorial calendars during my time at Salesforce. Managing an editorial calendar SHOULD be pretty straightforward. At its most basic level, an editorial calendar answers three questions: 🎤 What’s being posted? 🧐 When? ☕️ Where? But I’ve run into plenty of complexity when managing editorial calendars over the years. Questions come up like: 😛 This calendar is too detailed. Where’s the exec-facing view? 🤓 Can we include <these other company milestones> in the calendar? 🤠 How do these individual pieces of content support <these company themes or priorities>? 🤩 Who is the audience for this? How much content are we making for each audience? You can up-level the complexity of your content calendar depending on the size of your company and what you’re trying to do. Our editorial calendars at Salesforce are now pretty robust. 😂 But ultimately, I think content marketers should be focused on making a rock-solid content strategy first. THEN you use the calendar as an important planning tool in your toolkit. Making a great editorial calendar is usually not “quick.” But it’s definitely valuable. If your current calendar is not working for you, change it up! ✌️ Check out the video for more editorial calendar pitfalls from my experience. What’s your approach to editorial calendars? Simple or fancy? Updated by many folks, or managed by one content lead? I’d love to know! Shoutout to my bud Devin Reed for requesting the topic of editorial calendars! I’m open to more suggestions, y’all.

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Something the best ad agencies can learn from McKinsey -   McKinsey gives high-conviction advice.   Most times, it's right.   B/c they have an edge...their people and their playbook.   If a client consistently disregards their advice, they do something refreshing…   Something most consultants and agencies never do...   They fire the client.   TLDR - they prioritize reputation over revenue.   They'd rather bleed quality and have a reputation for outcomes than bank extra rev.   Chalk it up to a "third edge."   This is how we operate too.   It's not that we're never wrong…   We're learning every day, too.   But if you're not ready to move quick and learn together, we're not a fit.   B/c retainers with the wrong brand--no matter how large--aren't worth the cost.

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