Greetings smiling Pixie,
I've been sending this letter every Sunday since 23 February 2014, which makes it four-and-a-half years. In that time, I have seen its impact not just in responses, but in imitators.
When we began, our open rates were lower than they are now, which average between 50% and 80%. Click rates averaged 4% - 11%; now they average 43%.
The change is a result of three things:
Learning what resonates with you.
Finding a form and a structure that works.
Regularly reminding people to decide whether or not to stay on the list.
Content results are not overnight results. It takes patience, time, and discipline.
This week's reading is a lot about content. It's about internal content, great distribution, and good workflow. All of it is incredibly useful; so I hope you enjoy it.
Have a sparkling week this week!
cheers
Leticia Mooney
Queen Pixie at Brutal Pixie | www.brutalpixie.com
Tip of the Week
Great B2B publications become great because they fit your Hedgehog Concept precisely and are handled with the seriousness that publications deserve. That means: Effort, consistency, and attention.
The Sunday Five
Here are five excellent items we've dug up this week. You can add to next week's by forwarding gems you find to hello@brutalpixie.com.
The Best Content Distribution Channel You’re Overlooking
As a content strategist, one of the most important parts of my job is working to bring teams together to share knowledge. It won’t surprise you, therefore, that this article talks about exactly this process. The best content distribution channel it talks about is your sales team; but very often the sales team (a) may not be aware of the content you’re producing; (b) doesn’t contribute to the production in any way, but should; and (c) often doesn’t have access. In this piece from the Content Marketing Institute, you get a nice little case study of how to rectify the situation. Read it here.
Key takeaway: Some of your most important audiences are internal.
[LAW] A New Platform Launches for Global Legal News and Commentary
This week saw the launch of LexBlog, a service that aims to aggregate the many thousands of law bloggers (blawggers) that are online. Why is the service necessary? The founders felt that while media is still covering big firms and large announcements about courts, much of the daily information that those in law consume comes from blogs. It’s in the blogosphere that we find comments on regulations, legislation and trends; lawsuits and interesting matters; and the types of things that matter on a daily basis to those working in law. Learn more here.
Key takeaway: The balance of news power is shifting, even in law, to the blogosphere, because it's personal, relevant, and valuable.
[CASE STUDIES] 5 Companies creating engaging and purposeful HR content
Content marketing might appear to be all about leads and sales, but did you ever think that it might take on a significant role internally? In this article over at Contently, five major companies are showcased for how they use employee-focused content, and the outcomes. In some cases it makes recruiting easier; in others it builds trust; in other it’s used for employee engagement. It makes a strong case for taking your enterprise’s internal content seriously enough to create a strong strategy around it. Read it here.
Key takeaway: By focusing exclusively on your prospects and clients with your content, you are missing a whole lot of opportunity. That opportunity is internal.
[NEW THINKING] Book review: The Economics of Open Access – on the Future of Academic Publishing
The Open Access movement promised to make academic content available freely or cheaply, but it turns out that the model has simply created expensive subscriptions and greater (negative) impact on libraries. So is this an inversion of the intention of the publishing model? It might seem that way. But it also seems that how we define ‘open access’ is not the same as the definition used by publishers. It’s an interesting enough article that I’m keen to go and get the book and read it. To my mind, it seems that there hasn’t been enough attention paid to properly impactful business models. Read it here.
Key takeaway: Access to information requires deep thinking about the business model, and its immediate, mid-term and long-term impacts.
[CONTENT CREATION] Content workflow using GitHub and Markdown
Ok so this is entirely self-serving. At Brutal Pixie we use Markdown to create all of our content. And we love git versioning and anything that makes the entire process easier. I was high-fiving an imaginary Ian Lurie when I saw this article. Then I read it and wondered if he had even bought a copy of Docs Like Code, because what he’s writing is what is in that book. The point of all this, dear reader, is that treating content like code makes sense. It allows you to track everything you do, version it correctly, edit collaboratively, publish to PDFs, HTML, ePUBs and OPML all from a single source. It’s amazing. At Brutal Pixie we work in Markdown and will be moving to GitHub once we work out the permissions and privacy to my satisfaction (and that of our clients)... and YOU should go find out why this can make your (content creation) life easier. Read it here.
Key takeaway: Content-like-code gives you more flexibility, more visibility, and deeper collaboration and insight.
[BONUS! TOOL] Typora (yep, it's free)
If you want to start exploring Markdown, and want to learn just how lightweight and easy it really is, then try this software. Typora is in beta right now, but it is a really useful and lovely Markdown application. Why? Because the preview is instant. Many Markdown applications have a preview panel, and this eliminates some unnecessary steps towards seeing the outcome. Typora is just light, clean, and simple... and I'm in love with it enough to share it. Get it here.