Four Ways Content Marketing Builds on Thought Leadership

Content marketing is now an integral element of public relations and is an extension of the notion of thought leadership. It varies the thought leadership approach in four ways:

1. It includes content not generated by the organisation

2. It can include content that is not necessarily 'insightful' or 'high-end'

3. It broadens the range of issues an organisation might offer content on

4. It increases the number of organisational employees who might speak, or represent the organisation, on certain topics.

Whether these aspects manifest themselves in an organisation's approach to content marketing will be entirely dependent on its communication and marketing strategies, especially its reputation management and branding dimensions.

The C word in content marketing

C = content. What's it all about?

Beyond thought leadership, or not? The answer is yes. Not all content needs to be cutting edge, ground breaking etc. But it should provide value to the target audience.

It can help organisations cover the broad ground of their remit (or their brand) that might otherwise have not been possible due to resources. For instance, providing an insightful, helpful comment on valuable content relevant to target audiences and then sharing it can be a worthwhile activity.

By choosing some core pillars to provide original content on, then having a 'satellite' of secondary topics where a content curation aesthetic is applied, can offer organisations the opportunity to have their cake and eat it too.

Certainly, it can help communicate and engage with secondary target audiences where marketing and communication resources are not normally expended. A 'reverse-flow' positive impact on primary target audiences can be instigated, as the secondary target audiences become sharers and advocates of that curated information that received the imprimatur of the organisation.

And as word-of-mouth (WOM) now has social media through which to accelerate its 'virality', this momentum of sharing has even greater potential than it once did. Especially since the digital age has cultivated the behaviour of social sharing (digital gossip) amongst its netizens.

Just remember: 'Your story travels further the less you mention your brand.'

Branding and positioning in content marketing

The social infinity does not seem to have canvassed the aspect of content marketing that relates to positioning and branding in great depth. Important elements in this dialectic are the sorts of content that are embraced by an organisation and who, from the organisation, does the 'speaking'.

Further elements include what role does content (and content curation) play in the broader content marketing context, are there any dimensions that are 'off-limits' and what is the rationale driving the content marketing plan?

Firstly, in regard to the content itself, each element of content that emanates from an organisational employee contributes to an organisation's branding, positioning and, to a lesser but still potentially significant degree, its differentiation. Choosing these topics should be driven by the strategy; content topics should not be picked up randomly simply because they are 'topics du jour' and of immediate interest to target audiences (i.e. how do these topics relate to brand-target audience relationships?).

Secondly, in traditional command-and-control organisations and those that apply a similar authoritarian approach to their communication, it has been a CEO-and-damn-the-troops mentality. I don't espouse this approach but, regardless of this, whatever approach an organisation takes will impact on how much content it can feasibly generate and curate.

From a pure practicality perspective, whilst thought leadership can be applied in a limited but still quite effective manner when adopting this antediluvian approach, it is simply not viable to apply it to content marketing:

' A primary reason for this is that content curation is more than just retweeting or otherwise sharing. There needs to be a qualitative value-add from the organisation to some degree some of the time (actually a lot of the time, but I'm taking the low [expectation] road here)

' Involving employees in content creation educates employees on their industry which, one would think, helps them contextualise their work efforts and give them information to get better at their job, increasing productivity

' Employee involvement increases commitment to their organisation ' likely to increase productivity ' and helps them become a stronger organisational advocate

' Utilising normal (non-marketing Martians?) minimises the need to hire additional marketing employees and can optimise financial investment into the program ' increasing productivity.

The most interesting and challenging aspect of this dimension, however, relates back to who are those doing the curating and how is this contextalised within an organisation's branding?

' What are they commenting on?

' What is the nature of their value add?

' Is there a comms or marketing employee facilitating all this curation, or is it the relevant individual doing it solo after, perhaps, some initial briefing and some guidelines have been set? This relates to the third point I flagged above.

Fourthly, and this is perhaps the most fundamental aspect, the rationales driving the strategy will determine all of those issues noted above.

The 'personality' of content marketing

One of the interesting questions about both content strategy and thought leadership is should it be refined and targeted to within an inch of its focus group-tested life, or should it be sprawling, multi-faceted and reflective of the tumultuous, fast moving environment in which most organisations exist ' and which, in fact, mirror target audiences' existences?

I suggest it probably all goes back to overarching communication strategy:

' the drivers of communication strategy

' what market research tells us what will engage target audiences and prompt them to enact required behaviour (e.g. purchase, whisper sweet reputation-enhancing nothings in their contacts' ears et al)

' perhaps, too, there is a unique emphasis or shading in the content that is delivered via various communication mechanisms

' branding/positioning/differentiation

' and what of the impact on content for each organisational spokesperson due to their own interests, preferences, knowledge, passions and the customer/target audience segment they are responsible for?

Whilst it will be the organisation's brand/personality that dictates the answers to these points and queries, in general I believe there is room for both schools of thought ' the refined and the rambling (i.e. humanistic) ' to work hand-in-hand.

A focus on topics and messaging that is relevant to the organisation and engaging for target audiences seems a prerequisite. But, and this is important, to rein in thought leadership or any other content to within a narrow set of parameters risks the organisation being perceived as cold, calculating, self-centred and predictable.

This post is an edited version of an article in a free white paper, The Holy Trinity of public relations. The white paper is available as a free download for all email subscribers to his blog, Public relations and managing reputation. The white paper provides an overview of the strategic dimensions of, and practical implementation tips on, thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances.

Illustration by guydownes.com.au ©]

'Call Me, Maybe' ' Lessons for your Call-to-Action

I don't know about you, but Carly Rae Jepsen's viral smash, 'Call Me, Maybe' has been stuck in my head for days. DAYS. (Please, see below if you have no idea about what I am talking). With all the parodies also out, there is almost no escaping it.

Having had the lyrics stuck in my head for so long, it has me thinking about the important Call you should be including with every piece of content you create: the Call-to-action.

Call Me'

So here's the story. Carly Rae has met this dreamboat of a guy and wants him to call her. So, she says 'Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me, maybe?' (and then repeats the request over and over again.)

It's a great thing that Carly Rae has made the request for a phone call in the first place. There's something she wants to happen, for this boy to call her, so she's asked.

That's the first step to a good call-to-action: actually making the request. You would think it doesn't need to be said, but all too often it does: Make sure you actually offer your visitors or readers a next step. Without it, you may be providing a compelling argument, but what do you then expect them to do about it? You should be offering up more content and continue to nurture their interest in what you have to say.

I mean, let's face it, if Carly Rae only said 'Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy.', her shot of getting any kind of follow up or next step out of that boy would be pretty slim. But she doesn't! She tells him to 'Call me!'Maybe.'

'Maybe?

That maybe is where I get hung up on her whole effort, and you should, too, as a marketing extraordinaire! In the world of online marketing, if you want someone to do something, you shouldn't just make your request, but make it an imperative!

Call me Now!
Call me or Miss out!
Call me and Make All your Hopes and Dreams come true!

While 'Call Me, Maybe' is perhaps the more appropriate thing for a girl to say when she is handing out her number (as The Rules indicate one should never give out their number, but only be asked for it), on your website or blog, you should want to entice people to deliberately do what you have asked of them. You want to compel them to stay on your site and keep moving forward or learning more, ultimately completely some sort of conversion action. The strength of your imperative may make the difference.

High Click-through Rates and Conversion Rates are the prize of every inbound marketer and the key to those is in the Call-to-action.

When going forward and designing your calls-to-action, remember the lessons of Carly Rae:

• Make the Request! but,
• Make it more compelling than 'Maybe'. (even with the video being viral :)

Watch the video the world is talking about:

10 Ways to Get More Responses to Your Next Survey

Surveys are a great way of collecting valuable marketing intelligence.

The only problem is that countless companies know this and send out surveys endlessly. Due to this, many recipients are 'fatigued' and no longer complete surveys.

But, you can break through the clutter! In this post I'm going to share with you some tips on how to achieve the highest possible response rates. I'll also provide some tips about post-survey activities that are great for fostering ongoing engagement.

1. Reward participants: Let's start with the obvious, reward your participants. They have taken the time out of their day to help you with your business. Say thank you with a discount or other incentive.
2. Set expectations: Tell people how long it will take to complete your survey. There is nothing worse than starting what you think is a two minute survey only to be confronted with a 'never ending' questionnaire.
3. Grow your sample size: If you need as many responses as possible (and they don't need to come from your existing client base) make it easy for participants to share the survey. Also remember to put it on your website, social media pages and promote it via email.

   

4. Short and painless: Only ask participants for information that you actually intend to use for a specific purpose. If you can't use the information collected by a particular question maybe it's not worth asking.
5. Explain why: Tell participants how you are going to use their information so they understand why it's important. It's also a good idea to include a link to your privacy policy.
6. STRONG call to action: If your aim is to get recipients to fill in your survey you need to make this call to action very strong and enticing. You can do this by using action orientated words, images, layout, buttons, fonts and colours.

   

7. Correct fields:Make sure that you use the correct field format for each question. For example use a date field for a date of birth, a text field for names and when you only want a participant to choose one option use radio buttons. This makes it very easy for participant to complete the survey and also preserves the accuracy and integrity of the data.

   

8. Post survey updates: People like to know that their feedback had an impact and if you tell them what improvements resulted from their feedback they are much more likely to participate in your next survey as well.
9. Breaking it down: Think about collecting information in stages. Realistically how much can you do in response to your findings? Collect some information starting with the most important, make improvements then collect more.
10. Attention: By the time participants reach the end of a survey you generally have their complete attention. This is a good time to ask participants to tell a friend, subscribe to a new offering or check out your social media.

So there you have it. Follow these tips and you will set your survey up for a great response.

The Price of Free

There are tons of great things out in the tech world right now that are free. Social networking sites, productivity apps, games, and music sites are all jumping on the bandwagon. But, what exactly is freemium, and how does a business plan like this ever expect to make money? Freemium is a combining of 'free' and 'premium,' and is a marketing term model based on the idea of charging absolutely nothing for a basic product or service ' and the App store is filled with them.

Some of your favorite apps for your smartphone or tablet device are based upon the freemium model. Facebook, Skype, Dropbox, Evernote, and Angry Birds all have free versions of their product; but then you begin to wonder: How do any of these products make money if they're completely free? They make money by offering a premium or full version of the product with advanced functionality, and people will pay for the upgrade.

'The easiest way to get 1 million people paying is to get 1 billion people using.'

' Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote

Check out the infographic below, or a full version, here.

via: Mavenlink

7 Personalities of a Social Executive

What exactly is a 'Social Executive'?

What exactly is a social executive, and what traits do they exhibit that other businesses looking to jump into the digital bazaar would be wise to emulate? Fortunately, thanks to Mark Fidelman's recent piece 'The 7 Personality Types of Extremely Anti-Social Executives,' we have a very strong idea of what the Social Executive is not.

In Fidelman's piece, he used the example of Captain Edward Smith'who helmed the Titanic for its famously doomed maiden voyage'to illustrate what a bad executive looks like. As Fidelman put it, 'Most experts agree that although the Captain went down with the ship, he wasn't a hero. In fact, he was the architect of the situation and due to his ineffectual management the ship sank.' But for every stubborn or misguided manager, we can also find examples of stalwart leaders, astute decision makers and trusty commanders.

In the business world, one good example would be Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Computers. In her recent article 'Connect with Business Leaders: LinkedIn is the Fortune 500 Exception,' Lori Ruff already went a long way in singing Dell's praises: 'Michael Dell has taken the virtues of LinkedIn and used them to propel forward. His own extensive network (around 20,000 first level connections) allows him to stay connected with partners and clients around the world. He can update them instantly and simultaneously with statuses, access crucial information at the drop of a hat, and organize meetings based on travel schedules with ease.'

To put it another way, Michael Dell simply gets it. He understands that businesses can no longer afford to rest on their laurels while the digital bazaar transforms the world around them. More importantly, however, Dell understands that in order to promote change he must lead by example. No executive has all the solutions to the many questions surrounding the shifting corporate landscape, but at least Dell isn't afraid to look for the answers.

Using Dell as our model of forward-thinking leadership, I offer these seven traits of what it takes to be an affective social executive. Fidelman has expertly identified the traits of those executives unafraid or incapable of changing with the times, but now it's time to seek out the antidote.

#1 The Malleable Mind

Think of the 'Malleable Mind' as the counter to Fidelman's 'Short Sleeve Fat Tie Executive.' Whereas Fat Tie Execs expect to be sole originators of all ideas, cruelly dictating company agenda from the confines of their office, Malleable Minds value the input of their employees. They aren't threatened by change'in fact they're often excited by it, and actively encourage an environment of new ideas and approaches. Malleable Minds recognize that employee initiative and collaboration are essential cornerstones of the social business, and they encourage their workers to utilize social media and discuss new ideas that might improve day-to-day operations. Malleable Minds know that you can't keep a good idea down for long, and see it as their job to absorb information and help put ideas into motion.

Identifiable Traits ' Malleable Minds understand that they're not the only ones with good ideas. They are unburdened by ego, actively seek feedback on their own initiatives and welcome the opinions of others. They understand that respect is earned not through an iron fist, but through and open mind. They may be the boss, but they do not take their positions for granted.

#2 The Multilateral Boss

Multilateral bosses know that it's not just what they know, but what everybody else knows as well. Successful social businesses rely on the collective brainpower of their employees. Airtight branding can only be achieved through a unified, multilateral effort on all fronts, and Multilateral Bosses do everything in their power to facilitate this. As opposed to Fidelman's 'Unilateral Boss,' Multilateral Bosses view silos as obstacles that inhibit effective communication. They stay connected, give and receive feedback across departments, and make sure they understand what roles each department plays. Further, Multilateral Bosses understand that social media allows them to communicate directly with their employees, other departments and even (especially) their customer base.

Identifiable Traits ' Social executives understand that brands cannot communicate externally unless they communicate internally. They ask questions, forward updates from other departments and offer to jump in and get their hands dirty if any unexpected complications arise. It's never about passing the blame and always about facilitating success.

#3 The First-Hand Exec

In another post titled 'These are the 25 Most Social CIOs in the Fortune 250,' Fidelman went straight to the CIOs themselves to learn what they thought being a social executive meant. Here's what Wayne Shurts, CIO of SuperValu had to say: 'I want to understand it, I want to know it, I want to see what's happening in that media, and I want to see that first hand. Being on Facebook and Twitter, and being active. That is how I learn the media. And that's way better than getting a consultant's PowerPoint on the topic. The best way to know and understand the media is to be in the middle of it.'

Already in these first three categories, a trend is emerging: successful social executives like to roll up their sleeves and dive right in. Sure, they could get a basic understanding of the changes in the digital bazaar of social media by asking for a report, but those reports are going to lack the subtle nuances of interacting on social platforms that can only be gained through direct, first-hand experience. As Nigel M. de S. Cameron, President and CEO of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, elaborated in my upcoming post at AT&T, 'You can't engage in social at second hand,' Cameron says. 'The socially credentialed exec ' will be a participant in the global social community'or sooner rather than later will cease to have an office in the C suite. There really is no alternative.'

Identifiable Traits ' The First-Hand Exec jumps right in. Even if they don't yet understand the possibilities (or even the basic protocols) of a new social platform, they don't let that get the best of their curiosity. The First-hand Exec sees inherent value in new media and knows that'just like when learning a new language'the best way to adapt is to just throw yourself into the deep end and learn how to swim.

#4 Sticking Their Neck Out: The Giraffe

In Fidelman's article, we learned all about 'The Ostrich,' the executive afraid to communicate simply because they are afraid of what they might hear. Giraffes, on the other hand, are happy to stick their necks out. They understand that as executives they are a very visible part of their company, and that they must represent their businesses with transparency, regardless of whether they are responding to positive or negative criticism. Giraffes understand that social media is a level playing field. Even with shining business credentials, executives engaging in social media have to earn their followers' trust, provide reliable insights and drive conversations concerning the ever-shifting digital landscape with authority.

Identifiable Traits ' Giraffes are approachable, available, and visible. Most importantly though, they're vulnerable. Giraffes don't hide their heads in the ground at the first sign of trouble. They allow all feedback to reach them'whether positive or negative. They take this feedback seriously, and are happy to offer thoughtful, considerate responses both to employees and customers, and to modify course if an employee calls a problem to their attention.

#5 Master of the Ripple Effect

Effective social executives are masters of the 'ripple effect.' They know the power of their own voices. They know that their priorities echo throughout the entire workforce. Good or bad, if they demand a culture change, things will happen. As Fidelman said in his 'These are the 25 Most Social CIOs in the Fortune 250' article, 'A recent study by PulsePoint Group in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit titled, 'The Economics of A Fully Engaged Enterprise' found that in the most companies where social business is a priority, the CEO and other executives are the vital advocates for cultural change that drives deeper levels of engagement within the organization.'

By implementing (and being the first one to master) a new policy of social branding, these actions will quickly ripple out to all departments, who will not only have a mandate for pursuing best practices for social business, but also a model for what those practices look like. President Truman famously said 'the buck stops here,' but Masters of the Ripple Effect know that it starts with them as well.

Identifiable Traits ' Masters of the Ripple Effect take initiative. They are unafraid of driving change, but they understand that real change has to come from the top down. It's one thing to mandate that employees begin to integrate social business practices, but it's another thing entirely to model those practices and pave the way for real change in company culture.

#6 The Outside-In Exec

The social executive understands that a successful social business must operate in a way that mirrors the outside world. Standing in opposition to outside trends in social interaction or best business practices won't get anyone anywhere. Executives who turn the outside in use social media channels to bring the world to them, to learn about new changes and how those changes might improve their day-to-day operations. They understand that branding is about engaging the client base by being authentic. Business can't guard themselves against the outside world on one hand and try to engage in social branding on the other. Social executives understand this, and know that they can't be authentic unless they're properly engaged in the same information sharing culture as the rest of the world.

Identifiable Traits ' The executive who turns the outside in always has one ear to the ground. They want to know what other businesses are doing and how people are using social media. They cherry-pick the best new ideas and practices, and find ways to incorporate them into their own business.

#7 The Information Circuit

The Information Circuit values brainpower. Sure, they contribute their own good ideas when the moment calls for it, but they don't privilege their own ideas over others'. Brainpower isn't about one person's abilities to solve every problem on their own. The Information Circuit understands that they are surrounded by intelligent, engaged workers who are usually quite eager to add their two cents to a conversation. Knowing this, the Information Circuit is happy to put a question out there to the workforce and let the idea bounce around until a solution has been found. The Circuit facilitates this by monitoring the conversations, forwarding ideas they find useful to the right channels and providing as much information on the issue as they can. Unlike Fidelman's 'Information Hoarder,' the Information Circuit knows that good ideas need to be heard, and that it doesn't matter where they come from.

Identifiable Traits ' The Information Circuit is always asking questions and posing problems. They want information in all its forms'not because they want credit for it, but because they want to make sure it reaches the right people. Although the Information Circuit is unafraid of criticizing less productive ideas, they won't block the idea from being debated.

Helping the Crew to Stay Alert and Informed

As Mark Fidelman put it in his 'The 7 Personality Types of Extremely Anti-Social Executives' article, 'The real reason the passengers didn't panic or rush to take action to save themselves on the Titanic was because the crew offered no social cues that the ship was at risk. They went on as if nothing serious was going to happen.' While it's important for executives to have a proven track record of success and the ability to draw from past experiences, successful social executives must always keep one eye on the horizon as well.

Leaders such as Michael Dell are successful because they intimately understand this dynamic. As the very nature of doing business in the digital age continues to shift, social executives must never be content to rest on their laurels. They must drive the conversation forward, seek help when necessary and discover new solutions for old problems.

But they can't do it alone. It takes an entire crew to sail a ship, not just a captain. Social media can facilitate this kind of mass communication in ways never before dreamed. As Lori Ruff put it, 'LinkedIn is the only place in social media that you'll see business leaders like Michael Dell and Vint Cerf rubbing elbows with the grunts from the mail room.'

The crew will always follow the example of their greatest leaders. More and more executives are coming to understand that they are not islands unto themselves. Success in modern business means fostering a spirit of collaboration and transparency at every level. The organization that embraces this spirit of social integration should have no problem detecting any hazards that might appear over the horizon.

The following infographic presents the most successful 25 Top Social CIOs in the country.

Write To Your Leads, Not To Your Co-Workers

Today I'd like to go over optimizing your long-term content marketing and web crawler engagement strategies, resulting in building satisfactory conversion writing ratios by taking advantage of search optimization strategies, statistically optimized keyword management and landing page behavior research. Wait, what?

Wouldn't it have been easier if I just said 'I want to help you make your blog better?' Sometimes we don't realize when we're speaking a different language to others because we're so used to the terminology and conventions of our field. It's easy for a business blogger to get too mired down by the terms and keywords they use every day without noticing it.

Keep It Simple

When blogging for business or professional purposes, you have to keep yourself from losing sight of the most important, and most often overlooked rule: your readers are not you. Terms and phrases that make sense to you may be lost on your readers. Even if you know what a 'semi-solid unilateral KVM transducer' is (and don't ask me, I don't know either), your potential leads more than likely will not. If you want to outline a process, stepping your readers through from Point A to Point B will help them grasp what you're trying to tell them. A blog that is difficult for the average reader to wrap their head around is a blog that isn't generating leads to its full potential. Even worse, it could be turning leads away.

Making your blog more accessible and easier to read will definitely increase your conversions. Even if your goals aren't to make a direct sale, conversions are what you should be aiming for, and your blog is another way to help you earn more. Simply attracting traffic to your blog will only get you so far, especially if your business depends on your potential leads doing something instead of just seeing something. Writing simple, convincing, easy to follow blog posts is an invitation for your readers to do what you want them to, all while entertaining or informing them at the same time. A good piece of conversion writing should feel natural and painless for the reader.

Social Networking Helps

Social media can help immensely in making your blog posts easier to read. Along with giving readers a comment space below your blog posts to leave comments on the page, provide your readers a number of different ways to get in touch with you personally across many different social networking services. You never know when a reader will send you an important question, or simply a 'Thank You' message for what you've written. Blogging is all about engaging with your potential leads directly'so why not make it even easier for them to do exactly that!

At the end of the day, conversion writing is a tough job that takes a lot of practice and even more trial and error. If you're having trouble reaching your audience and need help maintaining your blog posts, coming up with fresh content, or you're running low on inspiration, there are experienced writing services waiting on you, ready to help you drive much-needed traffic conversions to your growing business.

Myth: Quit Advertising Because it Just Doesn't Work

A lot of people enmeshed in the online world like to refer gruffly to other types of marketing as 'interruption marketing.' Predominantly, they are talking about advertising. Advertising 'interrupts' your reading experience. It can certain interrupt your television watching or your radio listening (do people still listen to the radio?). On social media platforms, advertising can fall into the downright annoying category. Yes, a lot of arguments are floating around about why you should stop advertising. As far back as 2009, Business Week noted, 'The vast majority of ads don't register with consumers.' In a recent post for Business2Community, Patrick McDaniel notes that many people go up to him and say, 'Yeah, I tried advertising. It didn't work.'

In fact, a simple Google search for 'advertising is dead' yields quite a few results:

Are all of these folks right? Is advertising dead? Does advertising just simply not work?

What does 'work' mean?

Not to be glib, but exactly what were you expecting your advertising to do? False expectations can be a big problem for businesses and marketers. If you were expecting your advertising campaign to pull your company out of the recessing, you probably found yourself disappointed. Similarly, if you thought advertising would make people like your product more, you were likely not satisfied with the results. As Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston note in Marketing in the Round, advertising is really best for direct marketing and building brands. If your objectives and measurement systems aren't alignment with those types of tactics, you're going to run into trouble.

Why do people think advertising doesn't work?

The most common reason advertising doesn't 'work,' I might hypothesize, is that people don't really understand how to make advertising work. Advertising is more like a puppy, not like a cat. You can't leave it alone and assume it will take care of itself. You need to plan your media placements carefully. You need to make sure you are hitting the right audience with the right kind of creative. And yes, you need to find ways to measure everything you're doing.

When we recommend advertising programs to our clients, we present online ads as akin to billboards. People don't click on banner ads much anymore, but they notice them, and if you are going to an industry website, seeing companies you want to learn more about can create an environment where clicks are more possible than in other places (like, say, CNN). We also recommend not using banner ads for sheer promotion anymore. Give people a REAL reason to click. Offer something that can answer a question or that can help your potential customers meet their objectives. If you are led to believe that an online banner ad will increase traffic to your website by leaps and bounds, you will probably end up believing that advertising doesn't work. If you don't capture click-throughs via a special landing page, you'll end up on the same boat.

In print advertisements, it's important to make sure your ad makes sense for your audience. Does your audience like copy-heavy ads that are more like advertorials or do they respond to graphic-heavy ads with very little copy? Do they like straightforward presentations or does their eye get caught by out-of-the-box creative? There are plenty of ways to test these kinds of approaches, whether it's running two different ads in very similar publications or timing your ads for a Reader Study issue, where people can respond directly to your ad and say what they think about it.

Again, if you do not have a methodology for capturing leads from your print ad, you are likely going to believe that advertising doesn't work. You need to find a way to attract readers to your website, and not just to your homepage. You need to drive traffic to a page where you can capture information. Incentivize this part of your program. Again, offer readers something that will entice them to click, whether it's a free white paper, an e-book that answers a key question, or something else along those lines.

If you engage in a print advertising program with an expectation that you will immediately be inundated with sample requests and sales, you will again end up believing that advertising doesn't work.

You can do social media and still advertise

Many people seem to draw a black-and-white contradictory picture between social media marketing and advertising. If you are on Twitter for your business, you clearly can't also advertise. Right?

In fact, this kind of thinking is leading companies away from some really intriguing integrated marketing opportunities. Print ads could drive traffic to a Facebook page. A QR code on an ad could lead to a YouTube video. You could even invite people to answer a question they see in a print ad by contacting you on Twitter. The possibilities for translating interest in a print ad to engagement elsewhere could be almost endless, in fact. But the 'this or that' mentality overshadowing marketers these days may cloud over all of that potential.

What do you think about advertising? Should people just give up on this type of marketing or is that crazy talk? What are your experiences with advertising? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

PS, this post is letter Q in the Alphabet of Marketing Myths series. You can catch up on the series here.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleen-lane/4989879689/ via Creative Commons