Wait. What? SEO for YouTube? Is that even a thing? 
 
Here at Copel Communications, we are not SEO gurus. But fortunately, some of our clients are. So we learn a lot. And when it’s prudent and discreet to do so, we’ll share some of the love. Hence this article. 
 
Short takeaway/spoiler: You can, and should, max out the SEO for your YouTube videos. In this article, we’ll discuss how. 
 
But first, the genesis of this story. 
 
As we’d noted above, this comes to us from an actual client assignment which, as we write this, is ongoing; they have tons of YouTube videos (most of which, incidentally, we also scripted). 
 
The challenge, as our client made clear, was to drive more search-query traffic to this huge repository of videos, spread across multiple playlists on our client’s YouTube channel. 
 
But how? 
 
There are two parts to this. Both are basic, yet nuanced. They are: 
 
1. The actual title of the video. 
2. The YouTube description of the video
 
Let’s review each. 
 
1. The title
 
We’re talking B2B videos here. So you might have an existing video about a product or service that you offer to prospects. And what’s its title? Sure, it’s something like “Our Great Product.” 
 
You must understand that there’s the real world, and then there’s the SEO world. In the real world, populated solely by humans, “Our Great Product” is a perfectly good title. It tells people what the video is about. Simple. No clutter. Great. 
 
But in SEO World, it’s unfortunately insufficient. You want to “think backward” from what someone who would ultimately want that product or service would be searching on in, say, Google (or in AI; more on that in a minute). 
 
So if your Great Product solves Challenge X for, say, logistics executives, you might want to revise and expand the title accordingly: “Challenge-X-Solving Product for Logistics Executives Seeking Productivity Gains.” 
 
Not terribly exciting in the real world, but a step forward in SEO Land. 
 
But wait. That new title is pretty darned long. Aren’t there limits on this, imposed by, say, YouTube? 
 
There sure are. Titles max out at 100 characters, including spaces. The one we just noted above was only 66. So there’s room to play. 
 
Often, depending on the viewing device (desktop or laptop browser, tablet, or phone), that title will get truncated and lopped off with just an ellipsis (three dots or “. . .”) after the first few words. Meaning, the first few words are the most important. Because those are the ones that will stick. So factor that into your re-naming. Put the most important stuff first.
 
It's not the real world. Sure, humans will read this stuff, too, but they’re only part of the audience. The rest is web crawlers, spiders, and all the algorithms that the search engines employ to serve up results which hopefully include your video. 
 
Now that you know about 1. The Title, let’s proceed to 
 
2. The description
 
Clearly, this is much longer than the title, but some of the same rules apply. Stuff will get cut off before you see the clickable “…more” to reveal the rest of the copy; a quick test on our desktop browser clipped it off at around 60 words. 
 
The max is 5,000 characters (not words), which can include links, text, and hashtags. 
 
That’s a lot of copy. It’s almost like a blog. About 1,000 words. 
 
Again, you want to fill this with info that your human searchers are searching for (what problems will the product or service showcased in your video solve?), as well as what the web crawlers want to find. For our recent project, these videos often offered solutions that helped with numerous arcane technology platforms, so we included bullet lists of those platforms in the description. 
 
The search engines like stuff like that. 
 
Know what they don’t like? Verbatim copy stolen from your website; they’ll ding you for that. So you want original copy. 
 
And you want it written by a human. All the search engines can spot AI-written copy from a mile away (as can we), and they’ll ding you for it. 
 
Which gets back to AI-based search vs. classic Google search. The landscape is still shaking out as we write this; even the term AEO (“ask engine optimization”) may not have legs. But what we’re seeing already is a refreshing overlap of what makes for good SEO content vs. AEO content. If you can nail the SEO side, the AEO side will likely catch up. 
 
Bottom line: Depending on the number of YouTube videos you already have posted, this could be a quick or long-term retrofitting assignment. And it should definitely shape your efforts for future videos; write the new titles and YouTube descriptions at the same time that you write the scripts. It will save you time and effort. 
 
Need help with any of this stuff? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​We love continuous process improvement here at Copel Communications! 
 
In this article, cash in on all the tweaking and optimizing we’ve been doing, literally for years, with different clients of ours, to make things as efficient and repeatable as possible. 
 
Today, we’re going to talk about B2B “demo” videos. Does your company ever make these? We’re talking about those “watch this screen and see what happens” kinds of explainers which also, of course, sell.
 
So it could be a product demo. A software demo. A service. A SaaS platform. A training session. There are tons of these. They are common. And chances are, if you need to make one of these, you probably need to make a ton of these. 
 
And this is where optimized efficiency—that “Big Mac-ifying” of the process—really comes into play. 
 
In this article, we’ll describe (in broad strokes, with the details purposely blurred) how we do this for a couple of clients of ours. Pay attention: We guarantee that there are elements of this process, perhaps many elements, that apply to your situation. And the more that apply, the more you can benefit. 
 
The challenge at hand
 
As we’d stated above, we’re going to anonymize these specific client assignments. But you’ll get enough detail to follow the process, and recognize opportunities to improve your own workflows. 
 
In the first example, this client of ours will do a screen-sharing demo of the prototype of a use-case solution they create for their clients. And they do lots of these. The big opportunity here: If you could anonymize these brilliant solutions, and pare them down into, say, little two-minute stories, you’d have marketing gold. You could use them to quickly populate, say, a dedicated playlist on your YouTube channel. You could use that to show to prospective clients, who stand to be awed, once you hit the critical mass of sheer videos posted to that playlist. Not to mention your ability to feed the voracious appetite of the SEO algorithms and web crawlers of YouTube, Google, and so on. It’s one big virtuous snowball. 
 
Turning those client demos into marketing videos, incidentally, was not as obvious a choice as you might think. You’re starting with a lot of sensitive material. You need to see the bigger marketing picture, strategically… and be able to literally blur the lines of sensitive information, tactically, once it comes time to execute. 
 
So. This client does more than have one of their reps conduct (and record, via Zoom) the client demo of each new prototype. The prototype itself is based on a use-case that was presented/sold to their client beforehand, in order to get the green-light to make the prototype. Follow? 
 
Between the raw footage of the demo Zoom call and that original use-case PDF, we’d almost have everything we need to script the video. But not quite. So here, after lots of back-and-forth and tweaking with the client, the third of our three pieces of input evolved. In this case, it’s a super basic Excel sheet. In one column, it lists the timecode of the demo video; in the column beside that, there’s a quick description of what is happening on screen at that time. 
 
Example: “00:32 – 00:41  User logs into platform, using two-factor authentication with an emailed six-digit code.” 
 
Someone on the client side makes that little Excel, typically only about ten rows deep, for us. It takes them about 30 minutes. 
 
And that’s all we need! From there, knowing this client well, we can pen the video script using a basic three-act structure: 

• Act One: The problem which this demo will address 
• Act Two: The demo of the prototype, showing it in action 
• Act Three: The call-to-action (“Book your initial consultation today!”) 

 
Even easier
 
As you can clearly see, the big lift, for the client, in the scenario above, is to create that little Excel sheet for us. But more recently, we’ve started making videos, for a different client, with no Excel required. 
 
That’s because, for the cool things that this client is creating (we can’t share details, sorry), they already create three PDFs which are not only goldmines for us, but they’re also all we require to start scripting. The three PDFs, broadly speaking, are: 

• The output deliverable, shown in a graphical format 
• The metrics by which the first deliverable is measured 
• A “heat map” comparing the first PDF to the second one

 
These PDFs are so detailed that we’ve been able to write video scripts from them, using their details as the visuals, with the simple addition of a basic voice-over. So there will be shots such as “Zoom in ultra-tight on the detailed box at the lower right of Page 3, and pan across the different functions listed in its flow chart.”
 
In other words, no “lift” from the client at all! It reminds us of Craisins. 
 
Huh? 
 
You know Craisins. Those “dried cranberries” originally created by Ocean Spray. While making cranberry juice, they would throw out all of the skins of the actual cranberries used. Until someone got the great idea of drying the skins and adding sugar to them, and coming up with a clever portmanteau name like “Craisin,” which implies “cranberry + raisin.” 
 
(Read our article about portmanteau names and how you can profit from them.) 
 
Think about that: All those cranberry skins were not being used. Today, they’re a massive source of newfound revenue. 
 
Ditto for the three abovementioned PDFs. They were used to create a client deliverable, and then effectively shelved. 
 
Today, they’re the basis of a “found money” marketing effort. With very little effort!
 
Need help “McDonald-izing” some of your existing deliverables and processes into efficient marketing gold? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​We recently saw what we’re about to describe, and it left us aghast. 
 
Learn from the little tale we’re about to spin!
 
What you’re reading—this article, these very words—is a blog entry. Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been posting articles like this, every two weeks, for more than ten years, now. 
 
Thank you. We knew you’d be impressed. 
 
But what is this horror-inducing tale? you’re surely asking. And what does that have to do with the title of this article?
 
Okay. Maybe you’re not asking. We already knew you were smart. And likely figured it out already. But stay with us. 
 
So. We post blogs on a regular cadence. Twice a month. At the top of the month, each month, our blogs are more focused on our consultants audience. At mid-month—like this article—they’re more broadly geared toward our creatives audience. And yes, they certainly overlap. You don’t need to be running an ad agency to get a good takeaway, from this article, for your business. 
 
As we’d said. Every two weeks. Like clockwork. 
 
Now you don’t need to do them every two weeks. That’s our cadence. 
 
But man oh man. It is a cadence. 
 
Here’s the story: 
 
We were recently connected with a gentleman who was running his own creative agency; it specialized in web design. We’d been introduced by a mutual acquaintance, and had booked a Zoom call. 
 
Prior to the Zoom call, we did our due diligence. That is, we checked out this web designer’s website. And this is where we had our holy !@#$ moment. 
 
Just like our site—and almost everyone else’s—this designer’s website had a “Blog” section. (It could also be called “Recent Posts.” Same thing.) 
 
So we decided to check it out. 
 
And when we got there—we are not making this up—we saw—promise, we are not making this up: 
 
One blog. 
 
One. 
 
Just one. 
 
One.
 
And—to make matters worse—it was date-stamped. From about two years ago. 
 
Oh-my-goodness. 
 
Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect searching for a web designer. You Google. You find this designer’s site. And you check it out, just as we did. 
 
And, out of curiosity, you decide to catch up on their latest thought leadership and/or musings. And you see one sole blog, time-stamped from two years ago. 
 
Quick: What’s your reaction? 
 
You got it: Are they still in business???
 
Our reaction precisely. 
 
Whoever you are, reading this article, do not repeat this suicidal mistake. Do not project to the world—and to your prospects, for goodness’ sake—that you, once, two years ago, had an idea, just one, and then went completely brain dead but somehow managed to keep paying your URL hosting fees. 
 
It is worse, far worse, than not having any blogs at all. Clearly!
 
Now extrapolate from this story, this extreme example. 
 
Could you solve this by having two blogs? One from two years ago, and another from merely one year ago? 
 
Of course not. 
 
See where this is going? If you’re going to post, then post. And keep at it. 
 
But what if you’re not a content machine? That’s entirely possible.
 
Then do this: Create at least, say, a half-dozen entries. And make sure they’re not date-stamped when you post them. Needless to say, make sure that the topics of these articles are evergreen, too; you don’t want to, say, comment on that morning’s big headline from the news. 
 
Of course, if you’re a web designer, you may want to show off that you’re good at building, and updating, websites. Starting with your own. 
 
Need help with a challenge like this? Or any other? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​We recently had a client assignment that went something like this (don’t worry; we’ll tell you how you can profit from this story in just a moment): 
 
We’d helped them write a huge long-form article for their website, touting their experience with a given industry, in a given U.S. state.
 
Thing is, this client of ours—a B2B consultancy—also had similar experience with other industries. And—you guessed it—in other states, too. 
 
On the surface, this is a very simple assignment. You want to broaden your reach, and your SEO rankings, for more than one industry, in more than one state. 
 
Sound familiar? Read on. 
 
Thinking outside the algorithm
 
Granted, the original article was an SEO play. In other words, it went after very specific long-tail keywords that our client knew were attainable, in terms of search domination. They’d called us in to do the writing. 
 
The original article—as you’ll recall, for one industry, in one state—was quite specific and detailed. But now there were two challenges, in terms of making “spin-off” articles: 
 
1. Talking about the other industries. 
2. Talking about the other states. 
 
Oh. And there was a third challenge, which was arguably bigger than the first two: 
 
3. Convincing Google that none of the spin-off articles were, in fact, spin-off articles. 
 
So Challenges 1 and 2 were fairly straightforward. To wit: 

• As far as talking about our client’s expertise serving other, specific industries, we were well-versed on those topics, and had plenty of material to draw from. This is good, because it already makes the first spin-off article substantially different from the original, in Google’s eyes. Of course, that won’t help with the subsequent spin-off articles targeting the same industry. 

 

• For serving the other states, a little research was required. This was admittedly a fun assignment: We found quick high-school-level fact-sheets on each state, and also visited the website of each state’s visitor’s bureau, to learn fun facts, nicknames of different areas, and so on, so we could pen these with a better level of local familiarity. 

 
(Did we do this 49 times? No. We didn’t. Our client had us rank all 50 U.S. states by population, and we went after the biggest 25. Smart, and cost-effective.) 
 
So now, armed with these different buckets of data, it came time to write all of the spin-off articles. 
 
Sure, we could’ve commanded Word to do a search-and-replace, on the original article, to plug in “Industry B” for “Industry A,” and even “State No. 2” for “State No. 1.” And even though the resulting article would be totally fine in the eyes of an Industry B prospect living in State No. 2, Google would not be amused. 
 
So it was time to get more creative. We had to re-order ideas and arguments, move paragraphs, re-title headlines and subheads, and change the phrasing within most sentences… to the point where the spin-off article was materially different from the original, yet still sold, potently, to the proper audience, toiling in the proper industry, while living in the targeted state. 
 
To AI or not to AI
 
We know what you’ve been thinking all this time: Why not hand off a basic assignment like this to ChatGPT? Isn’t that, after all, what it excels at? 
 
Yes and no. As we’ve discovered, ChatGPT can really help non-writers look better. For actual writers, the opposite is true. And that was the case here. We actually let ChatGPT take the first stab at this assignment. And its results worked in letter, but not in spirit. There were just too many flubs, none of which would be acceptable to this demanding client of ours. 
 
Could we fix those flubs ourselves? Absolutely. And we, at first, tried. But we quickly realized that it was actually less work to follow the process we’d described above than to babysit ChatGPT for this. 
 
Fast-forward a few weeks, and all the articles were written and illustrated (with the graphic team taking an analogous approach to ours) and posted online. The client was happy, and most important, the effort paid off in the SEO results. 
 
So it was a lot of effort, but certainly worth it. 
 
Need help with a tricky assignment like this? While we do a lot of big-picture marketing and creative strategy, we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get into the weeds. Contact us and let’s talk. 

​We see it a lot. Younger people enter the creative-services workforce, and are invariably disappointed when they don’t get to express their full genius on every assignment. Look at their killer portfolio! Look at the awards they won in school! What gives with the real world? 
 
In this article, we’re going to focus in on some of the (seemingly) most creative-crushing assignments, with an eye toward helping your client succeed. And our parenthetical comment above is spot-on, because if you believe there’s no room for creativity in that assignment, you’ve already painted yourself into a corner. 
 
SEO... as creative?
 
We worked on an assignment recently, featuring a slew of social ads aimed at executives in a particular vertical; let’s say it’s “logistics.” And we were told—it was a mandatory—that we had to feature the word “logistics” in the headline. 
 
Mind you, these are social ads. As we’ve written before, they’re a lot like freeway billboards. In that there’s hardly any room for copy. You get a few words, max. 
 
And now you’re telling me that I have to use the word “logistics” in the headline?
 
It’s enough to frustrate any creative pro. 
 
But there’s a sound method to this madness. And there is most certainly a creative solution to this challenge. 
 
First things first. If this ad, on a cluttered web page, is targeting logistics executives, it needs to cut the clutter of all the other ads that don't. Yes, you can show a picture of a long-haul tractor-trailer (and likely should), but nothing says "logistics” like, well, “logistics.” 
 
It gets worse. Or, depending on your perspective, better. We were also told—another mandatory—to get the word “exec” in there. We’re targeting logistics executives, right? 
 
Execs are a special, elite group. Again, think about it. You’ve got a genuine logistics exec, looking at some cluttered web page. He or she sees the word “Logistics” and takes notice. But there are tons of offerings in the world of logistics; it’s like manufacturing or insurance or any other huge vertical. 
 
But then you add the word “exec” to the ad, and it’s undeniably focused. This is what we might call “the SEO approach to creative.” It’s using the kinds of words that the audience would search on, to populate creative elements such as the headline. Which might read something like this: 
 
Logistic Execs: Boost LTL Throughput Now! 
 
Exciting, huh? Well, maybe not to you.
 
And therein lies the rub. This is what so many of the new-to-the-workforce creatives fail to grasp. You’re not trying to score points for cleverness. You’re trying to help your client make money. Simple as that. 
 
Deeper geekery
 
Notice the mention of “LTL” in that made-up headline above? It stands for “less-than-truckload,” which is an acronym that’s very specific to logistics. So while you would never use an obscure, and undefined, acronym in a headline to the general public, here, in this case, it slices through the clutter even more sharply. It tells that logistics exec, “We know what you’re up against.” It tells them that you speak their language, both literally and figuratively. 
 
Sounds crazy, but little ads like this work. We’ve jammed in some intense, industry-specific jargon, and whereas it would be death at, say a cocktail party, it works quite well when you need to cut through the clutter toward a very focused and time-constrained audience. 
 
So where on earth is the room for creativity here? 
 
If you’re in the tightly-constrained realm of a social ad, think of your remaining elements, besides the headline: 

• The subhead 
• The layout 
• The key image
• The call-to-action/button 

 
Not much, but it’s there. What if you did something like this: 
 
Logistic Execs: Boost LTL Throughput Now! 
ABC Enterprises Helps You Keep On Trucking
 
[Button:] 
 
Accelerate Your Performance
 
And what if there’s a totally outrageous, grabber image, such as a tractor-trailer... with a rocket engine and wings? The heat from the engine could even be scorching the call-to-action button. 
 
Well whaddya know. All of your college portfolio work paid off after all. 
 
The important thing—the discipline—is to know when and where to add the creative “spice” to an assignment, vs. letting the “untouched ingredient” stand on its own merit. The qualifier here, as always, is what the end-client/prospect/customer will respond to. Viewed through that lens, the decisions get much clearer. 
 
Need help with these kinds of assignments? Contact us. We’d love to answer the call. 

​It’s that time of year again: time for our annual year-in-review wrap-up of our top articles from Copel Communications. We do two of these each December: one for our “Creatives” audience, and another for our consultants audience. 
 
This one (although it's posting first) is the latter. Here are the top articles we’ve published for consultants, chock full of counterintuitive tips and business-building tricks. In case you missed any of these, here’s your chance to get some fast, free pointers. Enjoy! 

• How (and why) to “Go Hollywood” with your corporate videos. Straightforward storytelling is so… straightforward. Learn how to amp up engagement—and sales—with the cool tips in this article. 

 

• “You get paid to write emails?” We sure do. Clients make a ton off of these. Learn how to up your game with some winning email tips in this must-read article. 

 

• Are you giving away your sniff-test? If you’re not, you’re losing out on some easy new business. Intrigued? Check out this quick-read article, which will certainly get your wheels turning. 

 

• When a “tax” becomes a benefit. Learn—please learn!—from our client’s experience here. Turn a turn-off into a turn-on, via some simple perceptual tricks that will lower the barrier to adoption for your products or services. 

 

• How should you populate your LinkedIn page? Did you know that there are two broad—and competing—camps when it comes to the content that will drive you the most business? Importantly, which camp should you be in? Read, and learn! 

 

• SME-based articles for non-SME audiences. When is all that information… too much information? What do you keep, and how do you cull? Hint: Follow the money. Get important tips for selling your services in this article, based on several successful client engagements. 

 

• FUD for executives. How much do you know about “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”—and how to employ it to your advantage as a consultancy? Read this one right now. You’ll be glad you did. 

 

• Making money off your site’s visitor info. There’s some sexy info hiding in the data behind your website’s visitor traffic. This is not an “SEO” article. This is, rather, about reading between the lines to uncover some cool psychological keyholes you can use in your business’ marketing. Check it out. 

 

• How to create the perfect sales preso deck. How much of your website content should you use… or ignore? How do you control the narrative? How do you create discrete decks for different audiences, efficiently? Get all the answers, right here. 

 

• How—and why—to create a “sizzle reel” for your sales presentations. Ever heard of Rich Little? Whether you have or haven’t, he plays a big role here, and you’ll find this one super interesting, informative, fun, and useful. This is a good one. Trust us. 

 

• Sell more services via “product-izing.” There are lots of articles out there on how to “product-ize” your service, but we bet this one cuts to the chase faster, and more clearly, than all the others. Learn how to build new business, quickly, with this powerful tool. 

 
Have suggestions for topics you’d like us to cover next year? Contact us. We’ve love to hear from you. 

​Here at Copel Communications, we create a lot of content for our clients. Videos. Blogs. Case studies. You name it. 
 
Most of this ends up on their websites (as well as other places). 
 
So while this may seem like “the water’s edge” in the content-creation biz, we do often get insights from our clients' website and email traffic reports. It helps us raise our game, and continually improve, as we see what works, and what doesn’t work as well. 
 
In this article, we’ll share some info we’ve seen from some of our clients, in order to help you profit from it. Naturally, we’re going to anonymize everything we discuss, but you’ll easily detect the patterns in the noise. 
 
An SEO caveat
 
Before we dive into these weeds, we’d like to be nice and clear: Here at Copel Communications, we are not SEO experts. We doff our hats to those who are; indeed, we often work shoulder-to-shoulder with our clients’ SEO teams. 
 
That said, we specialize in the human side of the equation. We can’t tell you if Google will rank a certain paragraph higher than another, but we can easily discern whether or not it engages the reader, and compels them to, oh, make a purchase decision. 
 
So. We were screen-sharing with a client of ours recently, and they dove into their website analytics dashboards for us. 
 
What we saw was very interesting. 
 
All you need to know about this client of ours is that they toil in the high-tech B2B space. And they blast out a lot of content (which we help create), extolling their virtues and showcasing their ongoing successes. 
 
In any good website dashboard, you’ll be able to sort visitors by the platform they use to visit your site. In other words, “mobile vs. desktop.” 
 
Now, in this day and age, everyone’s gone mobile, right? If you judged only by the volume of Verizon and AT&T ads on TV, you’d assume that cords, and big computer screens, have all gone the way of the buggy whip. 
 
Well guess what we saw when this client clicked the tab? Turns out that 90 percent of their visitors were on desktop machines. It wasn’t even close. 
 
Ninety percent. Think about that. It tells you a couple of very important things: 

• These are people sitting at desks, with big machines. They’re either in an office or working from home with a serious setup. 

 

• They certainly have mobile devices, but they’re not using them for work.

 

• Importantly, they spend their days staring at screens with a lot of real estate. “Above the fold” is comparatively huge for these people, vs. tiny little phones or tablets. 

 
This one data-point alone dictates a ton of strategic and tactical considerations for our client: 

• We can assume that these prospects are sitting in an office when they view our stuff. We can even mention it in our materials. 

 

• We can safely tailor our website design to be desktop-first; what a delightful rarity these days!

 

• This speaks to the navigation, the amount of copy in each section, and even the number of pages and connecting links. 

 
If you haven’t checked this one little point of info in your own website dashboard recently, it’s time you should. 
 
Globe hopping
 
Here’s something else we discovered with this client: The majority of visitors, not surprisingly, came from the U.S. 
 
But quite surprisingly, these Americans accounted for only 44 percent of all visitors! Granted, our client does provide global offerings, but they are definitely U.S.-centric. Fortunately, the number-two country for visitors, clocking in at an impressive 27 percent, was the UK. 
 
It wasn’t enough for us to change all the spelling on the site to the Queen’s English, but still. 
 
Incidentally, drilling down to the top cities of visitors yielded London as number one, and New York as number four. Very interesting.
 
Dwell time
 
Here was another interesting insight. One particular blog article which we created for this client was consistently at the top of the hits. That’s fine; perhaps it simply has some good keywords in it. 
 
But no. It was more than that. Much more. Whereas most pages would be visited for one minute, this blog entry held readers for seven minutes. That means they read every single word of it. That’s huge. 
 
This helps to dictate other good (read: “similar”) topics for future blogs. It also provides indisputable data on how much time an interested reader will spend on valuable content. 
 
Nights and weekends
 
Last bit of data porn from this deep dive: Traffic on the site would spike early in the week… and then again on Saturday nights.
 
WTF? 
 
Turns out that this company (our client) sends out weekly emails (yep, we help with those, too), which go out early in the week. So, many recipients click on those emails’ links when they get them; thus the early-week traffic spike. 
 
But the website dashboard revealed a subtler, more interesting pattern. Many of the targeted email recipients are busy executives. Know what this means? 
 
It means that they get the emails from this company, early in the week. They don’t open them. They don’t delete them. They don’t mark them as spam. Rather, they save them for later reading, you guessed it, on the weekends. 
 
That’s how time-constrained these targets are. Knowing that helps us to craft focused content. It’s also reassuring to know that these people consider our materials “worth the wait,” too. 
 
Good content works
 
The takeaway here is that diving into your dashboard data will provide actionable insights and feedback. This is clearly a link-in-the-chain scenario: If, for example, the materials we provided this client sucked, then all the numbers would tank, too.
 
That’s clearly not the case here. We’ve helped this client. And we can help you, too. Simply contact us today to get started. 

Here’s a dilemma: Your business serves two different audiences. They each have different needs. They each are aware of the other audience—and may well be wary of them. 
 
Yet you need to serve them both. 
 
What do you do? 
 
Do you create two different websites? That is, one for each?
 
You could. But we think there’s a simpler, more elegant way.
 
A twofold dilemma
 
The situation we described above is common: 

• We’ve worked on websites for recruiting firms. They want to attract companies who need employees; that’s who pays them. At the same time, they need to attract candidates (i.e., potential employees) in order to serve them up to the employers. 

 

• We worked with a firm that serves HNWIs (high net-worth individuals), as well as a certain sector of professional-service providers who serve those HNWIs. The professional-service providers are often a gateway/referral source to the HNWIs, although sometimes the situation is reversed: The HNWI will come to our client’s firm, and will need the help of a professional-service provider. 

 

• We worked with a company that wanted to offer the world’s best computer coders to the internal departments at other companies. Just like the recruiting firms, they had to work both sides of the fence. 

 
So this is a common situation. Think about your client base, and the prospects you’d like to serve. Are they really all in one homogenous “bucket”?
 
The self-selecting gate
 
The simplest way to shepherd these crowds through your site is to give them a simple selection, right up front. Imagine a home page that is truly minimal. We’ll use the recruiting firm as an example: 

• You’ll see the recruiting firm’s logo and tagline. 

 
Below it, you’ll see two buttons: 

• “For Employers” 

 

• “For Candidates” 

 
There. Done. Simple as that. 
 
When you arrive at this site, you can’t get confused. You’re either an employer or a candidate, and there’s nothing for you to do but click one of those two big buttons. Thus you self-select your “side” of the site and enter it. 
 
As you might guess, each “side” of the site is similar looking, but different enough to avoid confusion. Imagine, for example, the exact same layout, but with different color palettes. 
 
Once the visitor is on their “side” of the site, it’s basically a self-contained experience. They land at “their” home page, where they get more-focused messaging and navigation. And they get the full panoply of options they’d expect: “Services.” “About.” “Recent Posts.” "Contact us." And so on. 
 
Some devilish details
 
As we’d mentioned above, the two different sides of the website are similar yet different. So just in case the visitor of one side accidentally stumbles onto the other side, they’ll know immediately that they’re on the wrong side of the fence, because it will look different. They’ll thus need to click their browser’s “Back” button to return to familiar territory. 
 
This leads to an opportunity, and a caveat: 
 
The opportunity: The “About” page content that you offer to one audience is likely 95 percent the same as the “About” page content you’ll be offering to your other audience. And aside from the color change, the layout is the same, too. 
 
This translates to a big bang-for-the-buck cost saving, in terms of content creation and site-development time. You can effectively copy-and-paste Version 1 to create the bulk of Version 2. So do this as much as possible. Start with the bigger/more difficult “side” of the site, and build it out. Then leverage its parts for Side 2. 
 
The caveat: You need to assume that members of Audience 1 will occasionally stumble onto pages designed for Audience 2, and vice versa. And since you want both of them as your clients, you’ll need to offend neither.
 
This is a messaging/copywriting challenge. You don’t want those HNWIs to think that you’re helping the professional-service providers to profit off of them. Similarly, you don’t want those professional-service providers to see anything that suggests you might interfere with their relationships—or revenue streams—with those HNWIs. 
 
So you need to craft the messaging carefully. And then you need to read each “side” through the eyes of each audience, and see if anything looks amiss. 
 
Making it happen
 
We recently worked with a web-design firm that was a vendor to one of our “two-audience” clients. The lead person at that firm was totally confused by our proposal of a “two-button home page.” They hadn’t seen a site like that before. They were scared it wouldn’t work. 
 
Now that that site is up and running, that person is totally sold on the idea. And so are our client’s prospects: The site traffic statistics confirm it. 
 
Here at Copel Communications, we also serve two broad swaths of clients: 1) consultancies, and 2) ad agencies and internal departments we call “Creatives,” since they hire us for creative services. 
 
And guess what? Our home page has two big buttons, too. 
 
Need help with that bifurcated website challenge? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. 

Where should you host your company’s videos? 
 
This is not a no-brainer. 
 
If you say, “It’s YouTube, end of discussion,” then you’re missing a lot of important points. 
 
We know, because this question comes up frequently in our discussions with clients. 
 
Let’s review some of those here. 
 
Where does it hurt?
 
We have a client that put a lot of work into creating a series of B2B videos, aimed at a certain target audience. But they had a legitimate concern: What does YouTube suggest, at the conclusion of the video? 
 
Aha. A valid contention. Think about it. Whenever you watch a video on YouTube, it ends with a little matrix of tiles promoting other videos, which YouTube thinks you’ll like, and thus serves up to you as “suggestions.” If you click on any of these, you presumably get to view content that you find valuable, and of course YouTube is rewarded; clicks are their currency. 
 
Let’s get back to our (rightfully) concerned client. Think about this: Who is serving up those “suggestions” at the end of your video? Is it you?
 
No. It’s YouTube. 
 
Uh-oh. This can have serious repercussions. If your company is ABC Widgets, you want to promote and sell those to the widget-buying public. So as soon as your whiz-bang widget video ends, your viewer may well be served up a suggestion to watch a slick new video from—you guessed it—XYZ Widgets. Your direct competitor! 
 
See why we said that this is not a no-brainer? 
 
Different sized gorillas
 
YouTube is a behemoth. And they’re owned by Google, in case that wasn’t big enough for you. If you want the world to see your video, you certainly want it on YouTube. 
 
But what about our aforementioned client’s legitimate concern? Do you want your prospects to possibly be served up “suggestions” to explore your competitors? Of course not. 
 
Thus we enter the murky realm of trade-off’s. 
 
There is, for example, Vimeo. It’s a video-hosting platform. It’s a small fraction the size of YouTube, but it functions flawlessly, in terms of serving up videos so that they play easily on any device. 
 
And Vimeo’s business model is structured a little differently. When a Vimeo video ends, it just ends. None of these YouTube-like “suggestions.” 
 
But, again, Vimeo is smaller. Reaches a smaller audience through, say, SEO. And you need to get a subscription (read: “pay for it”), with different tiers of membership available, to really make use of it. Creating a YouTube channel, as you know, is free. 
 
So you need to weigh the relative merits of each. For example, if you really want to feed those search-bots and get your video all over the world, then it’s probably worth going to YouTube, despite its sometimes unhelpful suggestions. If you really want your audience to stay focused and are willing to pay for it, then it’s Vimeo. 
 
What? Shun publicity?
 
Sometimes, you don’t want the whole world to see your videos. What it it’s internal training? What if it’s client-specific/competition-sensitive? What if it’s gated webinar content that you don’t want to give away without collecting viewer contact information (as their “ticket fare”) first? 
 
There are lots of ways to skin this proverbial cat. You can create a private link on YouTube, so that it’s not searchable. You can create a Vimeo video that’s password-protected. You can even host the video on a private link on Dropbox or Google Drive, although they’re not really optimized for playback, and thus might force your viewer to download the actual video before they can watch it. But that might be a trade-off that you, and they, are willing to make. 
 
And of course, there are hybrid solutions. Remember our YouTube-wary client? They ended up doing both: YouTube solely for the SEO benefit (the “shotgun”), and Vimeo for the specific client views (the “rifle”). 
 
Need help answering seemingly-simple questions like “Where should we host our company’s videos?” Contact us. We help with these all the time. 

We were recently tasked with a blog ghost-writing assignment in which we interviewed a subject-matter expert (SME) about a detailed technical solution that his company provided. It was kind of a case study, but was purposely genericized for a wider audience. 
 
Boy did we get into the weeds with this SME. The jargon and acronyms were flying. By the time we were done, we could’ve pitched this story to yet another in-the-weeds SME and impressed the heck out of him or her. 
 
But that wasn’t the assignment.
 
The SME in this case—and pay attention, because you’ll immediately see the parallels to your own business’ situation—was merely serving as a gateway. A translator. A guide. Importantly, he was not an avatar for the target audience.
 
Aim high, avoid distractions
 
Know that we went into this SME interview with our eyes wide open. Indeed, before we even booked the interview, we asked our client the crucial questions: 

• “Who is the target audience for this article?” 

 

• “What do we want them to do after they’ve read it?” 

 
Turns out that the target audience is effectively the manager of teams of technical specialists like the SME we’d interviewed. This manager must ensure that the entire shop runs smoothly; our client had a unique solution to achieve it. But its initial interface was at the desks of these tech toilers, solving their daily problems in a novel and creative way. 
 
See where this is going? When those tech specialists are happy, then the manager is happy. This, then, was a way into telling the story, and crafting the article. 
 
It also involved a healthy dose of simplification. Yes, after getting all that in-the-weeds info from our SME, we needed to translate it into terms that the manager would not only understand, but drool over. That’s not “dumbing it down.” That’s “writing the executive summary.” See the difference? 
 
Push all the right buttons
 
Of course our SME, in his daily life, reports directly to a manager who is similar to the person targeted by the article. So we asked the SME: “What keeps your manager up at night? What ‘buttons’ of FUD—that is, fear, uncertainty, and doubt—can we push?”
 
The answers may have been hard for us to guess at, but for the SME, these were softballs. That’s why SME interviews, done right, are a goldmine. 
 
In fact, this SME interview was more than a goldmine. It was an embarrassment of riches. We got enough, from one phone call, to write two articles for this client. One was the setup: “How many times has this happened to you? Wouldn’t it be nice if...?” The other was the payoff: “Imagine a solution that could deliver...” The “payoff” article, incidentally included what we likened to a “drool-worthy Christmas list” of real-life examples to get those managers thinking, outside the box, about just what was possible in this exciting to-be world. 
 
Importantly—and make sure you take this lesson to heart—these two articles were not presented as “Part 1” and “Part 2.” Each was, necessarily, a standalone. Never flatter yourself into thinking that your target audience is reading every single one of your articles, let alone in order, hungering for the next installment like it’s “Breaking Bad.” 
 
Go for the CTA
 
A thought-leadership blog, like the one we ghost-penned for this client, or that you would create for your business, is not merely fodder for the sake of feeding SEO bots or edifying your audience. Done right, it’s a well-crafted buildup toward a rewarding call-to-action, or CTA, for the reader.

• “Want to get the technical specs of this solution? Download the data sheet.” 
• “Want to see a screen-share demo of those items on the drool-worthy Christmas list? Click here!” 
• “Want to book a complimentary call with one of our SMEs? Click the link below.” 

 
While the CTA is the last thing you’ll mention in your article, it’s actually the first thing you should think about before you write it. 
 
Tease
 
The way that websites and social-media platforms are structured today, a blog article rarely stands alone. More often than not, there’s a brief teaser at the top of it/the link to it. You need to write this one, too—and take the assignment seriously. It’s been said that “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” but people do this all the time. So wrap it with a great tease. Go for shock-and-awe. Tantalize with the impossible or improbable: 
 
“Everyone assumes that cost-cutting and improved customer experience are mutually exclusive goals. What if you could do both, at the same time, using an ingeniously simple and counterintuitive solution? Get the details that will change the way you think, in this essential new two-minute read from ABC Associates." 
 
You get the idea. Note that we mentioned "two minutes.” Sadly, it’s an increasingly important element to include. Our collective attention spans have atrophied down to nothing. 
 
Of course, you can use all the tips above to craft that killer message. Or you could save time and turn to us. We tackle these kinds of assignments all the time—and they really pay off, because our clients keep coming back to us for more. Contact us today to get started!