Let me take the liberty of quoting directly from a book I’m reading:

“I am not neutral. I believe that a culture – whether global, national, corporate, or familial – is shaped by our daily practices and the the most powerful practice of all is conversation. Our careers, our companies, our personal relationships, and our very lives succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly – one conversation at a time.

“The conversation is the relationship, and – while no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a company, a relationship, or a life – any single conversation can.” ~ Susan Scott, author Fierce Leadership

This book is written for people working in companies, but it has many applications appropriate for small businesses, including independent professionals and entrepreneurs.

To go a step further, it can apply to online content marketing. It applies to what you write on a business blog. It’s a different kind of conversation on a blog since it’s in public and it’s written to an anonymous person or groups of people with a common interest. But it’s a conversation all the same.

People read what you have to say, and if it resonates with them, they will accord you trust points. If not, it’s click and bye-bye.

How are the quality of your conversations on your blog? Your web pages? Oh, maybe you’ve been delivering information online much like the TV announcers do during commercials? That’s not conversation, and that’s not content marketing.

Your thoughts?

I haven’t done a tech boo-boo in a long time, but I scored big this week when I changed my Feedburner account and all of my email subscribers disappeared. In an attempt to “seamlessly” transfer the subscribers from my Typepad blog to this new WordPress platform, I goofed.

The two people I depend upon for tech help are sick this week. I woke up at 4 a.m. trying to figure out a solution, but that’s not going to happen.  I need help on this issue. If any body knows of how I can get help, let me know. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to get help on Google’s Feedburner site except through frequently asked questions.

Meanwhile, if you want to get email updates, you’ll have to re-subscribe to this blog using the form over on the right. That one does work. (And, if you can help on this issue, leave me a comment with your email and I’ll contact you.)

I’d love to get your input and ideas. Your opinion matters. Can you please click here to take this short, 10-question survey?

What do you need to learn about Content Marketing?

It will only take 3-4 minutes of your time. I’m trying to find out more about what you need.

I’m throwing this question out to professionals working on the Web:

How should professionals balance the need for free content vs. the need to have content that produces good leads? For that matter, what about the right balance of for-fee informational products?

It’s all well and good to be generous with one’s knowledge and expertise. But at some point, there has to be a return on investment, no?

It’s smart for a plumber to publish complete directions on how to change a toilet, because chances are most people won’t want to do this themselves.

Published content should help readers make a decision. What’s your opinion on how much of it should be completely free, or in exchange for email or even a fee?

I asked my contacts over on LinkedIn and here are what some smart professionals offered as their point of view:

LinkedIn Question:

Content Mktg “?”- How do you balance free content vs need for lead generating content? Do you always require email in exchange for content?

Joe Pulizzi wrote:

Hi Patsi…we use the majority of our content to attract prospects to our site. Then we use conversion blogging or landing pages for them to sign up to additional gated content (blog RSS/email, white paper, etc.) so we can nurture them. So, about 99% of our content is free and sharable.

Our 1% where we require email is for our big content packages (newsletter, white paper, ebook). We feel this model works the best rather than limiting the majority of your content because – gated content is not shared in social media and without giving them a taste of what you can offer, it’s hard to get them to even think about giving up email/personal information.

Here’s some more take on this from David Meerman Scott: Tear Your Content Walls Down, Why Gated Content Might Not Make Sense.

Hope that helps.
Joe Pulizzi
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