Without distribution, the Content King has no clothes. Here are three ideas to fix that.

As someone who's always considered "storyteller" my foundational talent, I danced with joy at the rise of the content marketing trend. I looked forward to this new world in which everyone was working to the basic tenants I'd been following since journalism school. But joy quickly turned to hand-wringing.

With the global marketing community using content to sell everything from botox injections and gardening supplies to professional services and B2B mega-contracts, every channel is now flooded with thought leadership. 

Look no further than your LinkedIn feed: I wager the majority of it is shares of content created by a third party, right? Similarly, your e-mail box no doubt offers a library of reading material, updated daily. Much of this content is useful, high-quality stuff. But there's so much it's overwhelming people, so they're consuming less. They simply don't have the hours to wade through the deluge to find what they really want.

How do we avoid the pain of spending time, talent and money crafting kingly content that nobody sees? We need to deploy as much effort on the distribution as the creation. And I don't mean old-style mail blasts or ad campaigns. Here are three modern, salient ways to cut through the flood.

ONE: Drip-Feed Campaigns
Remember when today's news was tomorrow's chip wrapper? No more. A good story can run and run if repeatedly promoted by a variety of news hooks. In fact, with our audiences' busy lives and short attention spans, twenty enticing, differentiated promos leading back to the same article may be what you need to get one click through. Check out the way monthly magazines use Twitter; they're masters at this approach. Consider breaking a major white paper into different lists of bullet points: questions, facts and statistics, opinions. Add images. Start the drip. By connecting to current events you can re-invigorate old stories and refresh content long after its expected sell-by date. (If your content is obviously dated, of course, be sure to update or pull it.) Related content adds to the drip. Consider short videos from the author or interviews with people who have different perspectives. Encourage and post commentary. But keep everything pointing back to your original story, creating a virtuous circle of promotion.

TWO: Person-to-Person Channels
The same generation that turned marketing on to content has, ironically, turned off to marketing. They may want that useful Top 10 List on the highest-margin uses for their new MBA, but they'll ignore it if it looks like it's part of a targeted campaign. It's time to turn to our most powerful and under-utilised channel: our own employees. I am far more likely to read something endorsed by a friend, colleague or the real person I buy stuff from than someone's lofty CEO. But we need to go further than the current default of asking them to forward stuff on LinkedIn. It adds no value if I think they're doing it to meet their in-house marketing targets. At the minimum, I want some context from them. Why do theythink it's worth looking at? Ideally, I want a personalised e-mail, from someone I know, with the content attached and some bullet points just for me, where my contact tells me why I, uniquely, should spend time on this. That's a feat of personalisation impossible for a marketing department, but simple for any one individual to do for another close contact. The trick here is giving your employees the training, materials and permission to pass things along.

THREE: Print
You thought print was dead? Endangered, perhaps, but its rarity means it's punching far above its weight. I attended a conference last week that pulled in a speaker far above its profile, simply because the organiser had sent a thoughtful, hand-written invitation on quality writing paper. It was such a highlight of his day, he favoured her over the stack of requests in his inbox. I'm not suggesting you draft in a team of monks to hand-letter your marketing materials on vellum; print has modernised with its online offspring. Digital printing offers reasonably-priced, small runs that can be highly customised. Link it with a web page and you can get as sophisticated as a personalised magazine sending a reader to a personalised, digital, interactive experience. Integrate QR codes into print so readers can quickly move online, or download a related app. Mixing media enhances an experience, just as using multiple channels amplifies it. Ultimately, however, the appeal of print is the basic magic of the rare and beautiful standing out in a crowd.

Face fear, find happiness in professional prime

It's been a year since I left the comforting security of full-time, contracted corporate employment, and I've never been happier.

Partly, that's because today's big jobs in big companies are rarely comfortable, nor secure. You perceive that you're safe because of your contract, your benefits and the predictable pattern of your work life. But you often pay for that in a host of stresses, from the threat of redundancy to long-embedded corporate politics to the lack of mobility inherent in top-heavy old corporates.

But mostly, I'm happy because I'm calling my own shots, and have returned to the kind of work I love
doing. I've joined a growing host of marketing and communications specialists with 20+ years under our belts who no longer fit the profile of in house teams (young, cheap, unquestioning) but have a wealth of experience and skill to offer. London's contractor market is keeping us busy, and, in most cases, is giving us more fulfilling work than we were doing in house.

I hesitated longer than I should have before making the jump, Fear of the unknown, especially after years of a regular pay cheque hitting your account at the end of the month, is a potent inhibitor.  For those out there who feel hostage to their in-house jobs, but don't feel brave enough to change, here are three good reasons to make the move.

ONE: Empowerment reduces stress
It's a sad fact that marketing and communications staffers are often the first to get the chop when the downsizing starts. Inevitably, staying employed becomes the No. 1 objective. That's often at the expense of taking risks, being creative or doing the right thing. Once you become a consultant, the whole paradigm shifts. Yes, you still need to make your clients happy. But they're hiring you for your experience; they want to hear what you have to say. The nature of your employment changes. You don't expect long term, and can walk away at any time. That actually takes the stress out of tough times, and makes the whole nature of the relationship easier. You might choose to be a serial monogamist, taking one long-term contract at a time (the route I've chosen). It feels almost like an in-house role, but your retained independence is liberating.

Sure, there are other stresses. Your income is more variable, the future less known, the hassle of employment admin great. (Oh, how I miss an HR department!) But those are stresses you can plan for, and administrate your way out of.

Two: You're free to do what you're best at
Most great marcoms practitioners I know love to get their hands dirty. They love digging into a business problem, then getting involved in the solution with a bit of copywriting, a storyboard, dreaming up some campaign concepts, etc. Inevitably, the higher you get inside a corporation, the less actual marketing communications you get to do. At best, you're coming up with ideas and coaching younger team members as they take on the work. At worst, you're channeling ever more energy into administration and corporate politics. Once independent, you're back in control of the kind of work you do. I'm at the coal face again, mixing strategic advice and fresh ideas with practical deployment. With that comes joy. The nature of contract work generally means more discrete projects with set time frames ... leading to a greater and more regular sense of accomplishment. And your clients want the same thing you do. They're paying you for a specific skill, thus are far more conscious than in-house bosses of not wanting to waste your time (and fee) on work that doesn't fit your brief.

Three: You'll be at the cutting edge of a new in-house marketing model
While I question the long-term wisdom of their choices, experience shows that most corporations want to get rid of their older marketing communications staffers. I've seen this my whole career; it kept me employed as a cheap 20-something while early employers collapsed. The trend, however, seems to be accelerating, with 50 as the gateway to the employment danger zone. Sure, this is keeping marketing costs down, but I think corporations will increasingly feel the pain of that lost experience. They inevitably tend to repeat their marketing mistakes of the past, because there's nobody left in-house with institutional memory. The upside, however, is a new and growing army of highly experienced freelancers, usually working at or well below the rates of equivalent agency people. A savvy, brave brand could now almost completely virtualise its marketing department, selecting the individual freelancers best for particular needs, flexing up and down at will without any of the hassles that come with permanent employment. All while spending far less than with an agency, while getting a higher match of the exact skills they need. My current client is brilliant at using contractors strategically, and I strongly believe this will become the norm in marketing. Those of us in today's freelance market can help bring about the revolution.

I'm not saying I'll never consider a contracted, in-house role again. Merely that it's not the only summit of the career ladder. Think hard about what you want, and be brave. Job satisfaction is much under-rated and too often ignored. Ironically, embracing your fear may be the path to true happiness at work.

Luxury brands get the basics right

When I moved from PR to Marketing eight years ago, my PR agency gave me a Mont Blanc pen as a farewell and good luck gift.  I've treasured it ever since and, amazingly, haven't lost it.  But it couldn't survive a run-in with my 18-month-old cavalier King Charles spaniel, who chewed a generous splinter out of the top half.

I was devastated.  Doubly so when I saw the price of new ones.  Could it be repaired for less?  I popped in to the Mont Blanc store at the Royal Exchange yesterday and, sure enough, the outer casings are replaceable parts.  I could get a new top for £65, replaced while I waited.  When he emerged from the repair, the Mont Blanc rep announced that once he'd swapped the top, the bottom looked noticeably different.  So he changed both for the same price.  Giving me, essentially, a whole new pen for £65.
The price we pay for luxury brands is extraordinary, but they do three things to justify it.  Things we could all learn from, as they remind us what's at the heart of a strong brand.

ONE:  Customer Service.  I've paid the price, now treat me like it.  Replacements, cheap or free repairs, rolling out the red carpet in the shop. These little things keep me a customer, and are generally insignificant costs within the huge margins of the brands.

TWO:  Quality.  With a few trendy exceptions, luxury brands start with exceptional quality.  I have a Coach handbag that's passed its 20-year mark despite terrible beatings.  My first pair of Ferragamo's classic bow pumps were my lead office shoes for 12 years (and many re-soles) before I decided the uppers were looking tired.  Unsurprisingly, I bought a new pair ... for significantly more than I paid for their predecessors!  Quality like this is expensive, but when it's tangibly better than the other options and lasts many times longer, you amortise the investment.

THREE: Club Spirit.  In an extension of customer service, most luxury brands try to create an exclusive, clubby feeling amongst their customers.  Berry Brothers invites us to regulars-only tastings at their nearby corporate offices.  Riverford Organic Veg, who deliver weekly, gives us extra treats on milestone deliveries and invites us to dinners for long-standing customers.  Nespresso's Club is often profiled in marketing magazines; they're masters of making us believe we're part of a special group, even though they're just flogging coffee capsules and there are no doubt millions of us on the list.  All of these brands get added loyalty from me because they've made our relationship a two-way one.  I feel a part of their brand experience, thus I almost feel I'm cheating if I shop elsewhere.

There's no reason we can't incorporate these basic lessons into the less glamorous world of B2B marking.  Why don't more of us do so?

Secrets of a great trade show

It's the first year in more than a decade that I'm not gearing up for the Gartner Symposium in Barcelona.  In my last role, this was one of biggest trade shows of the year and one of my single largest marketing expenditures.

With the perspective of hindsight, and the new luxury of being a disinterested observer, I can ponder: How did we get best value for money? In a nutshell, it's about building a package of content and interaction so that the face-to-face shows are merely the climax in a relationship with a long prologue and an equally lengthy denouement.  With an end result, of course, of sales.

Here are the three biggest priorities to make that happen.

ONE:  Consistent, great content.  Start with a theme and build out from it.  Last year, we began with the future of the office.  Teaser articles, surveys and blogs in the buildup.  A major new white paper and a variety of presentations at the shows, all mapping back to our paper.  We blogged and tweeted live from the shows.  In our white paper, we'd introduced the idea that all executives would need to take on five new roles to survive in the digital age.  Our show follow-up was a self-diagnostic quiz so they could rate how well they perform those roles now.  We continued the topic on our corporate blogs and social media, and armed sales people with content and discussion guides to carry on the conversation in the more intimate setting of their client meetings.  Once upon a time, we'd do a single white paper and a single show.  Now, people realise a package of great content can keep a story going for six months or more.  Which justifies that anchoring trade show investment.

TWO:  Trained staff.  Provide in-depth briefings, complete with messaging and clear descriptions of their role, to everyone who's even mildly involved.  Gather the booth team together at the start of every show to reinforce what you need them to do, and to build their enthusiasm.  Give private coaching to any exec with a speaking role.  But it's not just the people on the ground.  We tipped off our network of bloggers on how to link to our show topics.  We briefed the sales people who weren't there on what the people coming by the booths would have seen, and helped them understand how to build on what their customers would have experienced.  For a good white paper to capture customer interest, the sales links and product/service pushes need to be subtle.  Sales often doesn't have time for subtlety.  I've learned that you need to be very specific pointing out just how they can move from discussing Topic A to selling Product B.

THREE:  Follow up.  Uniting both elements above, you need to combine salient follow-up material with a sales force trained to use it.  Trade show appearances open a door and build goodwill for a short period of time.  If you don't get in there and take the next step, the benefit fades quickly.

I concentrated on one set of shows and did them every year, which gave me the opportunity to turn what I did into a well-honed machine.  But remember, it's a machine that depends entirely on the content at its heart.

Three ways to instantly improve your web site

Now that I'm in job hunting mode, I'm spending a fair bit of time on corporate web sites.  Few are giving me what I need.  Most are slickly designed, and it won't take me long to tell you a lot about their current marketing campaign.

But try to find basic information about the company and you may be up a communications creek without a paddle.  More than half the time, I've found myself defaulting to Wikipedia, where the company page has been far more useful.  Dangerous, of course, because that's a crowd-sourced document out of marketers' control.

It wouldn't be hard for most companies to instantly fix this issue.

ONE. Be obvious "About Us".  This is accepted terminology; don't get creative.  Get this label in an obvious place, at home page level or one click below, and link all your company overview material to this spot.  Don't be clever and differentiate with artistic headlines.  Don't hide it because you assume visitors already know about you.  This is the most basic type of information that any job hunter, investor, journalist … and most prospective customers … will look for.  Who ARE you?  Yet the number of companies who bury these basics, or don't have them at all, is shocking.

TWO.  Think like a journalist, not a salesman.  Often, when I get to the corporate overviews, they're written as an extension of current marketing spin rather than the pragmatic details I need.  Anyone seeking a basic overview is going to be looking for details like ownership, size, locations, history, share listings and prices, etc.  Most Wikipedia entries are actually brilliant at this, because they've grown out of the needs of people looking for the basics.  If you have a Wikipedia entry, look there and reverse-engineer to your website.  Test it on someone who knows nothing about your company or your industry.  (Mothers tend to be excellent for this!)

THREE.  Keep the language simple.  Once again, following a basic journalistic model here saves everyone time, and gets your facts across.  I've been shocked by the amount of corporate jargon, passive voice and lightweight marketing spin I've encountered in an area that should be a basic factual report.  Once again, driving me to Wikipedia for something in clear English.  Keep it simple, direct, fact-filled and lively to keep readers on a page you control.

Kudos to Vodafone (screen grab shown above), who's offered the best practice model of all the sites I've skimmed in the past fortnight.  I won't name and shame the worst.  Sadly, there are too many of them.

Now is the time for HSBC to invest in internal comms

So, HSBC will rename and re-brand its High Street presence in the UK.  A bunch of branding consultants, designers and advertising agencies are going to have a very good couple of years.  I wonder if the internal communications people will do as well?  I hope so, but I fear not.

Common sense says that employee comms should be the last thing you cut in times of dramatic change.  Sadly, it's often seen as a "soft" discipline and easily jettisoned when a company needs to downsize.  And HSBC's stated 8,000 UK jobs ... about 10% of its workforce ... is a big cut.  I've experienced this cutting off of the nose to spite the corporate face too often, most memorably as part of slashes to Worldcom's employee-facing programmes within a fortnight of its CEO being indicted for fraud.  If ever a company needed strategic internal communications, that was the time.

Will HSBC be smart enough to invest in all of its comms people, and not just the external ones, at this time when they can do the most good?  I hope so.  Those I know are excellent practitioners.  Here's what a top internal comms team can do at a time like this.

ONE:  Keep morale up, and people working.  Major redundancy programmes are one of the most toxic things you can throw at big corporate productivity.  They usually take ages to complete and proceed in a cloud of secrecy, causing employees to spend more time worrying about their jobs than what they need to do to help.  It doesn't have to be this way.  Internal comms strategists involved at board level can shape messages that resonate with the employees ... both those leaving, and those who remain.  They can shift the focus from bitterness and rancour towards executives to understanding and a battle mentality.  The enemy, after all, is never the execs making the cuts.  Its market forces and competition.  When communication works, the people who leave understand why they had to go, and the people who stay have a renewed commitment to fight for the future of their company.  And their jobs.  The difference in productivity is vast.

TWO:  Coach and support line managers.  Fight or flight instinct usually kicks in when we have to make people redundant.  It's the worst task most managers will ever undertake, and few are emotionally prepared or naturally skilled enough at communications to do it well.  The fighters get combative and cast blame, the fliers are brusque and quick.  (Layoff by e-mail, anyone?)  Neither is appropriate.  Line managers making redundancies have to communicate a strong message clearly and sensitively, take plenty of time to listen, and be ready to provide emotional support if it's needed.  Then they need to emerge to rally the survivors.  A strong internal comms team will provide the message packs, presentation materials and support documents to help them.  At the best company I've worked with in this area, we led coaching sessions and took the part of the redundant employees in role playing so managers had some practice before they went into the tough meetings.

THREE:  Sanity-check external messages.  People forget this one too often, keeping internal comms teams in their own little silo as marketing and PR handle the external stuff.  But the employee comms people can be better than either of those groups at making sure sensitive messages are credible and compelling.  The best of them play an almost ambassadorial role, occupying a relatively neutral ground between management and employees.  They have to understand and be able to speak for either side to create the communications that work for both.  With the freedom to speak the truth, they can bring the tough criticism of the front lines to bear.  If crisis messaging resonates with the workforce, it's usually credible with other audiences.

I admit a personal involvement here ... I'm an HSBC Premier customer.  After frustrating exepriences with other banks in both the United States and England, they were the best I've found.  In five years, I've never had cause to complain, and every interaction has been helpful.  I hope for my sake, and for all the employees who've helped me over the years, that the company manages this well.

Three warning signs that a corporation's comms will never be strategic

Over the years, I've seen many communicators unjustly criticised for not being strategic.  The majority of the time, they're forced into the tactical by the organisations and the executives they serve.  Nobody wants to get stuck in that situation, yet too many of us wake up there once we get to know the organisations we've joined.

Here are the top warning signs.

ONE:  Executives don't take our contribution seriously.  Oh, they may pay it lip service.  They may even throw big budgets your way.  But these dangerous execs don't truly see communications as a strategic contributor to business success.  This can be hard to spot from outside a company, so getting the scoop from current team members is essential.  Typical signs of trouble are:  senior marketing/communications execs with no actual experience in the field (often a top sales person who fancies events, or a biddable yes woman who'll put individual demands over the good of the company); expensive vanity projects chosen for their fit with executives rather than their relevance to customers; executives who demand content, events and campaigns without contributing any strategic input of their own; a majority of young or under-skilled team members (these execs prefer comms teams who don't have the experience or bravery to challenge them).

TWO:  Poor plans.  Back in my EDS days, things ran like clockwork.  The senior execs created a clear business plan with the overall strategy and the specific business goals for the year.  Marketing built a similarly direct plan on top of that.  The communications disciplines then fleshed it out.  At the time, I didn't realise how rare that was.  Ask a room of corporate communications heads if they have an annual plan they're proud of, and most will sheepishly admit they don't.  Often, it starts with the lack of the business plan at the very top.  It may not exist, it may be too high-level to develop specific plans beneath or ... sadly typical in really large corporations ... it may be so vast and complicated it's not a plan at all, but a long list of random, unconnected desires.  In each case, it's almost impossible to build a good marketing plan below.  You'll get something that shares the same issues, and the problems will cascade down.  It's perfectly acceptable to ask about plans when you're interviewing for a job.  If the discussion gets nebulous fast, beware.

THREE:  Bad measurement.  Measurement is the holy grail of marketing communications.  Everyone talks about it; few do it well.  In general, the more problems a corporate communications team has with measuring its work, the bigger a sign that the function isn't tied in to the company's strategy.  Problems typically take three forms.  Most often, lack of decent plans means measurement is deployed ad hoc on stand-alone projects.  There's no big picture, no movement against a benchmark, because the company doesn't follow one strategy long enough to allow it.  More dangerous are the magnificent measurement cons that spin out reams of beautiful charts and graphs, with lines going ever upward and to the right ... but the success of the marketing programmes aren't matching the business performance.  I've seen marketing teams hire spreadsheet wizards purely to invent the measurement myths that make them look good.  This works in the short term but, as marketing disconnects ever further from business performance, will always end in disaster.  Which generally takes us right back to point No. 1, where some senior execs are demanding non-strategic marketing activities that pump their egos, but not the bottom line.

It's likely that you'll find elements of all these problems in any big corporation.  Most season
ed corporate communications professionals have spent their careers trying to solve these problems.  But they are red flags.  And if you see too many of them in the same place, you may want to re-evaluate whether you want to work for the company.  Because with too many of these flags flying, you'll never be able to make a truly strategic impact.  And that's no fun.