I love great story. Not just good ones -- great ones. Unfortunately there's too much sift through each and every day and our prefrontal cortices can't process that much information.
Especially when most of it's crap.
That's a grumbling I'm hearing more and more in the HR marketplace and beyond is that everyone and their third cousins are cobbling together shoddy marketing content and pushing it on the street, usually heavily promotional and lacking best-practices substance.
We do our best to advise HR suppliers to develop and release quality content for marketing purposes -- to further visibility, traffic, leads and improved SEO -- giving something to the reader that they can apply to their companies today whether they buy any products or services, or not.
We don't always win that battle but we do our damndest.
And then there's one of our latest client downloads from LeadershipIQ that does just that, generating:
Amazing.
Then there's the issue of whether to require registration or not, which LeadershipIQ did require -- but only requiring an e-mail address, like a newsletter sign-up.
How the heck can you follow up aggressively with leads with only an e-mail address?
You can, but remember the difference between cold marketing and shutting up to sell me stuff marketing.
But again, it all comes back to the quality content with a chewy nougat center -- here's an excerpt from LeadershipIQ's Why 5-Point Scales Don’t Work—and Other Problems With Employee Surveys:
Almost every employee survey in the world asks some version of the question, “Overall, I am satisfied with company ABC.” The only thing that will remain untapped in that question is the information you really need.
Let’s imagine you score a perfect 7 out of 7 on this question (or even 5 out of 5 on your current survey). What does that really tell you? It says, “Absolutely, I am satisfied.” It does NOT say, “I will drip blood, sweat and tears to achieve this extraordinary goal in order to feel the addictive swell of pride and achievement.”
It can’t say that because you only asked if people felt satisfied. And being satisfied is a mediocre feeling when compared with the life-altering fulfillment that comes from giving 100 percent.
How wonderfully visceral is that?
I will drip blood, sweat and tears to achieve this extraordinary goal in order to feel the addictive swell of pride and achievement.
I'm full. They are my new favorite client.
But I love you all. Really, I do.
Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter!)
Labels: content marketing