Restorative yoga is a gentle, passive practice that promotes relaxation in the body.
The other day at the start of my weekly restorative yoga class, our instructor asked us which areas of the body we’d like to focus on that day.
A few other regular students shouted out, “Shoulders! … Lower back! … Psoas!”
However, I stayed quiet because I started writing this article in my head. Class that day wasn’t going to be restorative for me because I viewed my yoga instructor as a content marketer and her students as her audience members.
While she likely already had a series of poses in mind to teach that day, she asked her audience for feedback that would shape her lesson plan. Tailoring the asanas to her students’ needs would help ensure that they were satisfied and happy that they came to her class.
But did the requests from her students stifle her own vision of what she wanted to teach? Did the suggestions block her own creativity and passion for yoga?
On the contrary, I argue that her students’ input actually enhanced her creativity and passion for yoga.
The same thing can happen when you find out what your prospects hope to achieve by consuming your content.
Inhale and focus on how you can help
When you serve an audience, you focus on how you can use your natural abilities, strengths, and knowledge to help people.
Listening to your audience’s problems gives you direction. You don’t aimlessly create content. You recognize what
Category: Adaptive Content
3 Adaptive Content Resources for Advanced Marketers
Let’s say you own a yoga studio in a town of yoga enthusiasts. It’s called Om Depot.
You currently offer an equal number of Level 1, 2, and 3 classes every day.
Monday through Thursday, your Level 2 and 3 classes sell out and you have to turn people away, but your Level 1 classes only have a few students.
On Fridays, however, a yoga group for beginners visits your studio. Your Level 1 classes sell out and you have to turn people away, but there is plenty of space in your Level 2 and 3 classes because advanced students take private classes at a different yoga studio on Fridays.
Once you notice this pattern, if you don’t make adjustments to your class offerings based on your customers’ behaviors, you’re missing an opportunity to serve them better.
The same is true about the experiences you offer your website visitors. Wouldn’t your content, products, and services stand out if you could adapt each visitor’s experience to meet his or her needs?
This week’s Copyblogger Collection is a series of three handpicked articles about the first steps you need to take when you want your site to have adaptive content. They’ll show you:
How to fix your old, neglected, and broken content
How to identify site visitors (and why it matters)
How to personalize your content to boost conversions
Keep reading for a bonus that will provide additional adaptive content education.
A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content
Before you can create customized
8 Conversion-Boosting Ways to Personalize Your Content
Quick quiz: What would you be willing to give up to receive information that interests you?
Chocolate for a month? Your smartphone for a day? Sex?
Sounds crazy, but according to a July 2013 study by Janrain, 25 percent of adults would be willing to give up chocolate for a month to receive content tailored to their tastes.
Twenty-one percent said they would give up their smartphones for a day. And yes, there were people who said they would give up sex to receive information that interests them. Thirteen percent, in fact.
And not just for a day. Nor a week. No. They would give up sex for an entire month.
A month.
Think what that says about the pleasure people get out of personalized information — content that adapts to the right person at the right time.
That might seem extreme, but more than anything it suggests people are fed up with irrelevant, banal content that doesn’t address their needs.
Sadly, that message doesn’t seem to be getting through to marketers fast enough.
Personalization increases conversion
According to stats from Econsultancy’s January 2014 Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, more than half of marketers believe personalization is important. But a stubborn (and sizable) 27 percent still believe personalization doesn’t matter.
That’s odd considering the endless number of studies that suggest personalization increases conversion — so many studies, it’s almost safe to call this hypothesis a fact.
Perhaps marketers simply do not understand the technology needed for personalized, automated content. That’s understandable.
As a writer who suffers from
Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site
The world of marketing is being turned on its head. Instead of messaging that promises an experience, effective marketing must itself begin the experience.
Does that make it “marketing” any longer? Or is it something else, something valued and sought after instead of avoided?
The experience that any smart “marketer” must create is powered by content, first and foremost, because that’s what people are looking for. But what they really crave is something much deeper and meaningful.
And that’s exactly why membership truly has its privileges — for both you and your prospects, customers, and clients.
In this 19-minute episode of New Rainmaker with Brian Clark, Brian and Robert Bruce discuss:
Why the media approach to marketing works
How a major corporation killed their “marketing” department
The one word that epitomizes great content marketing
The Holy Grail of all revenue models
The power of the “logged in” experience
Why Facebook is not — primarily — a social network
Click Here to Listen toNew Rainmaker with Brian Clark on iTunes
Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM
About the authorRainmaker.FMRainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand business advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.
The post Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site appeared first on Copyblogger.
13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy [Free Worksheet]
Welcome to the year of adaptive content. The choose-your-own-adventure era of content marketing. The age of the customized customer experience.
We’ve already tipped our hand by publishing two podcasts on the topic: Adaptive Content: A Trend to Pay Attention to in 2015 and Behind the Scenes: 2014 in Review and the Road Ahead.
And 16 Stats That Explain Why Adaptive Content Matters Right Now is a foundational blog post that briefs you on the subject.
At this point, it’s only natural that we jump right in to the heart of adaptive content.
But after reading two dozen articles and at least one white paper, flipping through two SlideShare presentations, listening to a few podcasts, and reading four books, I realized if I want to prepare you to implement adaptive content, we have to go back to the beginning …
And start with content strategy.
Can you really trust your content strategy?
Content strategy needs to be precise. See, before you even put pen to paper, you need to know the direction you are heading.
Most of us who work online, from freelance writers to small business owners, probably have a content strategy. But there’s just one problem: it’s up in our heads.
But if you say, “My business is not that complicated, and neither is my content strategy. I know where I want to take this business. I don’t need to commit it to paper,” then this stat should make you take pause:
Only 39 percent of B2B small business marketers have a documented