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Lean content marketing
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Resources, tools, tips, and tricks for the most efficient use of content with the minimum use of resources.
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...The only problem is, infographics that look like they were simple to make are often anything but. Creating something beautiful and instantly understandable in Photoshop is often beyond the limits that time allows. Which is why it's occasionally useful to use a quick and dirty infographics tool to speed up the process. We've selected our favourites here. They're all free, or offer free versions. Let us know which ones you get on best with... Via Jeff Domansky
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
A picture is worth 1,000 words, right? But not everyone is a designer and can make an impact with a nicely crafted infographics. That is unless you use some of these lean content tools to create an infographic from pre-defined, easily modifiable templates. Note that the premium version of these tools - we use PiktoChart at Scoop.it and shared some results here - is likely to be necessary to get a professional result. 
Miklos Szilagyi's curator insight,
August 22, 2014 4:26 AM
I know nothing about this but it looks like a good starting point...:-)))
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With the explosion of visual content in the last year, it’s getting harder than ever for brands to get noticed and persuade their target audiences to take action. One way to rise above the noise is to consistently integrate your brand into your visuals, through a consistent, well-thought-out template of color, typography, and design. What’s driving this explosion in visual content? A growing number of bloggers and businesses are recognizing its awesome power to communicate in powerful ways that words alone cannot. At the same time, apps and tools have matured to the point where nearly anyone can create and distribute attractive-looking images and infographics tailored for a variety of social media channels.
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:
This article covers how using distinctive visual content helps connect people to your brand, business or blog across social networks. You may want to consider the use of distinct visual content as part of your clean content strategy.
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One of the Lean Content best practices we’ve seen several speakers at our meetups recommend is to leverage existing audiences on top of your own to increase the reach and the impact of your content. While your blog may or may not yet have a strong audience, there’s always more people to reach. By placing your content on publishing platforms which offer interesting discovery mechanisms or having blogs that are read in your industry re-publish it, you could in theory multiply your own reach by not doing much more.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
There are of course some Pros and Cons to do that and we also wanted to measure how valuable such a strategy could be. While there's certainly an impact and we confirmed re-publishing to be an awesome lean content strategy, our conclusion is more nuanced: depending on your content strategy objectives, you might want to embrace this strategy 100% or consider alternatives. Here's why.
Ken Schneider's curator insight,
July 22, 2014 1:18 PM
I love data! Math applied to Social Media posts - even better!
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A successful content marketing strategy is one that's not only built to handle current industry needs and challenges, but can also scale to meet the demands brought about by successful growth. Here...
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Content Marketing works. But how do you scale it? Very often, we see marketers struggle after getting initial successes. Producing more content is hard and this post gives interesting ideas on how to leverage contributors, existing audiences and curated content to help achieve your goals.
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's curator insight,
June 30, 2014 10:47 AM
Have a win/win strategy by combining both content creation and curation. Why? Content creation = The you & your business Content curation = The world around you and your business 
Emmanuel 'Manny' Gigante's curator insight,
June 30, 2014 12:48 PM
it's your #context to your #content plan wisely
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As a professional who is using written content to market your products or services, you probably have many articles, special reports, and white papers. How can…
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Following up on the piece Ally curated recently, here's the hands-on practical presentation with step-by-step tips that are easily actionable. Still unsure? Well, repurposing works and is one of the most effective lean content technique as we've documented here.
Jeremy Pollard's curator insight,
June 22, 2014 8:48 PM
We all gained a great communications channel when LinkedIn bought Slideshare. Once you get past update posting on LinkedIn, and posting other peoples' pictures of other peoples' quotes - posting your own actual content is a great goal (and one of my New Year resolutions)
This is a good, practical article on how to re-purpose current content into a usable format for promotion via SlideShare
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Creating and cultivating content regularly can be overwhelming, but having a clear content strategy helps you to be a signal instead of noise on the web.
Ally Greer's insight:
Great tips in here from HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe. From identifying specific people that you want to reach with your content to creating content based upon frequently asked questions and personal experiences, there are many content strategies that might take some time to adapt at first, but will make the future of your content marketing significantly easier. Check out the post for some more tops on creating a complete, successful content strategy.
Dr. Pamela Rutledge's curator insight,
June 11, 2014 3:26 PM
We advocate persona-fication--persona development--to better identify and understand your audience. Here's a great article on content strategy that speaks to the value of personas. Students sometimes struggle with understanding why a 'made-up person' is going to be of any value, particularly since we all have inherent cognitive biases that color our judgment. There is no doubt that bias will influence persona development. But everyone has developed a persona whether they admit it or not--it's living in their brain as the assumption of who they are marketing too. Too often the lack of articulation increases the bias, not decreases it. Benefits of creating a persona publicly is to compare them with others in the team AND the audience, in other words to expose your bias. Qualitative researchers keep a journal during data collection and analysis for this very reason--the journal chronicles the researcher's perspective to bring potential biases to light. It is exactly when the marketing team has little in common with the audience who uses a product that creating a persona has value for two reasons: 1) you test the persona in the market against real people and 2) you can (although not all do) externalize yourself from the persona--step aside and have a dialogue, much in the gestalt therapy fashion,. When done with proper guidance (i.e. someone who is trained in this kind of stuff), these approaches can provide new and often startling perspectives. Personas don't always work. Nothing is foolproof. The 'right' persona doesn't guarantee that your product is any good or that your messaging is very salient or sticky. There are other skills required besides persona development. Going through a persona development exercise, however, is likely to have gotten you closer than you would have otherwise.
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Last week, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers presented her Internet Trends report for 2014 at the Code Conference in California. Since we're fans of tl;dr analyses & content curation, though, here are some of the most important points from the first half of the report.
Ally Greer's insight:
Each and every stat that came out of this report is extremely interesting, to say the least. Meeker and KPCB have spent every year for the last 13 years analyzing Internet, social, mobile and digital trends and shaping the way marketers and businesses make decisions. In the first half of her report, Meeker addresses a few important subjects, and I've taken some stats from the ones that are the most relevant to content marketing & the future of publishing. The three most notable sections here include mobile content consumption, information distribution, and community building. In the world of mobile, Meeker finds that the most up-and-coming trend is tablets. While they do have the most room for growth, that doesn't always mean that they will be growing at the fastest pace; however they are. Ensuring that all content is mobile optimized is extremely important for marketers. It might seem like this isn't news at all, but the fact that 20% of content is being consumed at mobile and only 4% of ad budgets are allocated there demonstrates that it still isn't being taken seriously enough. As far as promotion and distribution, the most important finding states that content that's shared on Facebook receives half of its referral traffic within the first 9 hours. This means that half of the people are going to click on your Facebook link have already clicked it within 9 hours. For Twitter, it's even less: 6.5 hours. Here we have a solid demonstration of the fact that social content needs somewhere to live besides just in Facebook and Twitter timelines. After a few hours, it disappears into the feeds and referral traffic to your site plummets. Simply sharing links on social media will become decreasingly effective as this trend continues, opening the door for sites like Scoop.it which give your social content a place to live and allow it to be rediscovered by a whole new community (over 1 million strong) as well as through search. It's also worth noting that Meeker lists community as one-third of what she has dubbed the "Internet Trifecta." with the ever expanding number of consumers online, there is more of a natural human desire to connect with others through content. Marketers who provide context to the content they are creating and sharing are the ones who are able to increase connectivity within their communities of interest and grow stronger, more stable evangelism programs which lead, in turn, to brand loyalty. So, how does this all translate into what content marketers can do to keep up? Here are three simple tips. 1. Don't publish that blogpost or send that newsletter until you make sure it will look good on mobile devices. This is no longer an option. 2. Use content curation tools to create a hub for your social content. Just throwing it into the Internet without context or a place to live isn't going to cut it anymore. 3. Empower your readers and customers with content through which they can connect. Create brand content that's easily accessible, findable, understandable and shareable to form relationships and assist in the buying cycle.
Brian Fanzo's curator insight,
June 4, 2014 6:19 PM
Change is happening and content must provide value and stand out from the noise but more importantly be timely! 
Kai Bösterling's curator insight,
June 15, 2014 4:42 PM
The best & most successful types of content are "uploadable, shareable, and findable." [Mary Meeker] #Quote #ContentMarketing
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Renowned marketing author, Seth Godin, once said - “[Content marketing] – is all the marketing that’s left. Teaching your customers and giving your customers the resources to believe you is new marketing.” This is very true especially today when most consumers will simply ignore the mass advertisements that interrupt them every single day.
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:
If you are reading this, you are doing IT, the IT is consuming content. The problem with being on this side of the content (the consuming side) is that some else is getting to move the reader in a direction that will benefit them, be it a pageview, newsletter sign-up or even a sale. This article is a good example of Lean Content, it's not lengthy on wording, it uses "other people's content" (OPC) and images to make a point. We can even look at this Scoop.it post I just had you read as part of my Lean Content strategy. By making this Scoop.it post my Lean Content strategy is to get you wondering who is Brian Yanish and what does his company MarketingHits.com do.
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From
blog
A few weeks ago, content marketing expert Michael Brenner posted on his blog a list of signs that a business is not ready for content marketing. He brings up an interesting point in that many businesses believe they need to launch a content marketing strategy simply because everyone else is doing it, even though they may not be properly equipped to do so. If your business can relate to any (or many) of these situations, it’s likely you might need some preparation before launching a content marketing strategy. I’ve gone through Michael’s list and provided some tips on how to combat some of the signs your business might not be ready for content marketing.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
If you're concerned that you're not ready yet for content marketing, here's a great list of answers crafted by @Ally Greer to the most frequent concerns you could have on launching a content marketing strategy. And yes, they work even if you thought you didn't have resources or budget.
Scoop.it!
Before we even launched our public version, we recognized that a lot of content curators were also occasional or regular bloggers and started to offer ways to integrate with Wordpress - the leading blogging platform. Since then, we've seen a lot of our users leverage this integration as well as more and more of our Enterprise clients wanting to combine content curation through Scoop.it and the CMS capabilities of Wordpress for their sites. So we've multiplied the ways you could integrate with a Wordpress site or blog and here's a recap of how to make this work.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
One of the ways to make your blogging leaner is to leverage content curation to complement the original content you create. Here's how to use Scoop.it with Wordpress to optimize that.
C-Marketing's curator insight,
May 9, 2014 4:50 AM
Avez-vous intégré votre veille dans votre blog ? Vous devriez ! 
YvonneFinn's curator insight,
July 7, 2014 12:47 PM
Is there anyone anyone who doesn't have a Wordpress blog?
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Content Marketing Tips for Launching a New Product by Guy Kawasaki
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:
Interesting insight from Guy, building content for a new product using content curation. Guy is known for pushing his lean content to the masses.
Craig Stark's curator insight,
April 1, 2014 9:28 AM
I would say it doesn't have to take a year to build a quality content platform for SM before launch. With good planning and a calendar it could be done it 6 months.
I agree with his point about "earning the right to pitch your product" in groups and forums. 
Jennifer Beever's curator insight,
May 15, 2014 2:15 PM
This is exactly what I recommend to my clients. Start building your social media presence in the space in which you are launching a new product as soon as you decide it's a go. You'll be ahead of the game when it's time to launch.
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From
vimeo
Brian Yanish's comments: This video covers many tips to help not only Startups, but any business that wants to develop a lean content strategy.
Key points: 1. Identify The Customer 2. Run Experiment 3. Build a Minimum Viable Product 4. Be Versatile
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Children’s book author Jarrett Krosoczka shares the origins of the Lunch Lady graphic novel series, in which undercover school heroes serve lunch…and justice! His new project, School Lunch Hero Day, reveals how cafeteria lunch staff provide more than food, and illustrates how powerful a thank you can be.
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Variety is the spice of life … and digital marketing? Variety can certainly make a digital marketer’s life a little easier. When you’ve worked hard to create a perfect piece of content, you can help that content go the extra mile (and then some) by repurposing and recreating the content in a huge number of ways. Is it easy? Well, I wanted to find out.
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:
LEAN and MEAN!!! This article covers many great ideas on how to maximizing one blog post with 21 how to tips to re-use your great content. Here's the list for the article, I'm sure you can think of others to add. Hitting “publish” isn’t the end of content creation. At least, it doesn’t have to be. There are so many different ways that your content can live on well after it originally lands on the blog. Here are the 21 ways I’ll test and report in this blog post.
Adlava's curator insight,
October 30, 2014 1:53 PM
Always a fan of doing more with less. Make your content work for you!
Scoop.it!
Are you looking into hiring a content marketing strategist? Here are 7 skills (+ 1 bonus skill) you need to look for.
Ally Greer's insight:
A content strategist is more than just a blogger or someone who makes pictures for the Internet from time to time. It's important to find someone ( or a team of people ) with an integrated skill set including digital marketing, ability to analyze data, businessminded-ness (just made that up) and more.
Scoop.it!
Content Repurposing – Updating or changing content into a different form than the original to serve a different audience or the same audience differently.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
When I started to publish content, I felt frustrated that it didn't have the impact I wanted. I had spent hours, sometimes day on trying to get thoughts, data and examples together and when hitting publish, the post only lasted for a few minutes before being drowned in the social media flow. Several techniques like the ones Lee Odden mentions here addressing just that and prevents your content from "melting like wet snow as soon as it hits the ground".
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A couple of years ago at Ad:Tech in San Francisco, I was lucky enough to score an interview with one of the smartest content marketers on the planet. Rebecca Lieb is an analyst at the Altimeter Group and author of Content Marketing. I asked her, “What’s your number one tip for companies who are struggling to produce enough content?”
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
This is obviously an old post but one that I really wanted to share on this topic as an essential Lean Content technique: repurposing content. Jason Miller does a great job at building on and summarizing Rebecca Lieb's great advice for content marketers who should think of their content as a thanksgiving turkey that you can "slice and dice this thing for weeks on end." On our end, we've been experimenting with that technique a lot, sharing results on how this worked for us when using SlideShare as a way to repurpose some of our written content. Enjoy the meal!
Scoop.it!
Dave Paradi, respected presentation coach and PowerPoint expert, explains how you should approach turning a written piece of content into a SlideShare deck.
Ally Greer's insight:
Great tips on turning written blogposts into presentations on SlideShare. Not only does this help create a new piece of content, but it also makes your message more visual and shareable. We've seen lots of success with SlideShare as a visual blog and highly recommend it!
Brittany Berger's curator insight,
June 14, 2014 10:32 AM
This is a great piece on repurposing content. I love SlideShare for this purpose. Not only can it add a more interesting visual element to the blog post when you embed the presentation, but it puts your ideas on a new platform.
Scoop.it!
Want to improve your printed and online content? Chop these words -- mercilessly.
Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:
Keep it Lean and Real!!!
Michael Binzer's curator insight,
June 7, 2014 7:16 AM
Be direct, be short, be specific #communication 
Carlos Batara's comment,
June 7, 2014 1:23 PM
I was taught to write using Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" as my textbook. One of their first commandments. "Omit needless words," still ring in my ears. This does not mean, however, all uses of words like "just", "really", "maybe", "quite", and the other terms mentioned in this video have no use in lean writing. "Perhaps" the author took a strong stance "just" to flag the attention of writers to careful use of such terms.
Angel Penland's curator insight,
June 8, 2014 5:05 PM
Great little video. Need to check this out if you write anything serious at all.
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From
medium
How the Lean Startup can help us produce better content quicker and cheaper.
Ally Greer's insight:
Here's a summary of a talk presented by Tom Hewitson at the London Agile Content meetup. He does a great job relating the lean startup methodology to content strategy and I'm super excited to see the ideas spreading across the ocean!
Brian Fanzo's curator insight,
June 3, 2014 6:58 PM
Rapid creation, curation, collaboration... the goal is product content quick! Love it!
Ken Schneider's curator insight,
June 4, 2014 10:35 PM
Lean is always better; except for Kobe Beef, but in business fat is so 90's! This article is a good share.
Scoop.it!
There are many components of developing a successful and impacting lean content strategy, including testing different types of content, repurposing content for various platforms, building a community contribution program, and curating existing content.
Ally Greer's insight:
What tools do you use to keep your marketing lean?
Guillaume Decugis's curator insight,
May 13, 2014 8:33 PM
There are a lot of useful tools to help your content marketing efforts. Here's a selection that is specifically aligned with the principles of lean content.
Scoop.it!
Historically, the best visual content had to be created by highly skilled professionals with massively complex suites of tools. Thankfully, a new class of tools is emerging that offers a simpler, leaner approach to creating visual content.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Have you tried Canva.com? It looks pretty awesome.
Scoop.it!
65% of companies consider content marketing to be too expensive. But at the same time, content marketing is a huge industry with incredible amounts of money being spent.
Christina Guenther's insight:
The first half of this article does a good job recognizing the need for content marketing. However, your content marketing strategy should include both creating and curating. This is where Lean Content marketing comes in. Don't waste time creating content that already exists. Curating relevant content and providing your insight is how you can save time and money while staying visible online. It makes so much sense!
malek's curator insight,
April 24, 2014 7:20 AM
The content marketing figures caught my attention
Scoop.it!
“Nobody cares about your products and services except you and the others in your organization,” writes David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules for Marketing and PR. “What your buyers do care about are themselves. And they care a great deal about solving their problems (and are always on the lookout for a company that can help them do so). The good news for smart marketers is that this knowledge has the potential to make you many times more successful.”
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
A perfect definition of Content Marketing and why it works. Now to achieve that, an interesting lean content strategy is to leverage influencers in your space to contribute to your blog. Here's why and how.
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While this isn't exactly lean content marketing, it's certainly a great example of a lean process within a startup that ended up being massively successful.
Written by one of Buffer's engineers who worked on the project, the story is easy to follow and offers a lot of insight into how lean processes work - starting with an MVP and then getting rid of what doesn't work and expanding on what does work.
Another interesting insight to come out of this experiment is the realization that everyone has trouble finding relevant content to share online - the clear reason why this experiment was so successful.