How Paying for Postage Made me a Better Marketer I have a confession. I’m a direct mail guy. I’ve been responsible for over a billion pieces of mail. And when I say “mail,” I mean those paper things that come to your physical mailbox. (Good thing I didn’t have to lick the stamps.) I’ve learned a ton from the online marketers I’ve been hanging around with the last few years. Your expertise in harnessing technology amazes me, and the speed with which you execute astounds me. But as we all know — especially in the Copyblogger community — good great copy and creative raises all boats. And anyone who claims to be “crushing it” online could, well, “crush it even more” if they paid as much attention to their copy as they do to the technology.

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 by  Sonia Simone 9 Comments

The Astronaut, the Rock Star, and Your Content Strategy

20 million views … and counting.
I remember the first time I saw it. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, then commander of the International Space station, had taken his guitar into space. He posted a simple but powerful video of himself performing David Bowie’s classic “Space Oddity” — in space.
As far as I’m concerned, this pretty well cemented his position as coolest dude there has ever been. I mean, Canadian plus astronaut plus Bowie? That’s the trifecta of cool right there.
(Plus he juggles. In space.)
Like a lot of people, I assumed that Hadfield had an amazing innate understanding of what worked and didn’t work as content. He had been posting neat and interesting content to the web for months —- great tweets and YouTube videos on funny, everyday aspects of life in space.
They were memorable, they were highly shareable, and they paved the way for that 20-million view bombshell.
So imagine how surprised I was when I read Hadfield’s biography — and found out that when he was getting started, he was actually sort of an idiot about content.
But he knew where to go for help … the kind of help that you might benefit from as well.

Enter the entreproducer

Hadfield was on Twitter fairly early on … but (by his own admission) his content was pretty bad.
It was boring. It was dry. It wasn’t well suited to the medium.
Fortunately for us, Hadfield’s son Evan is really smart about content. He helped his dad understand what kind of content was worth posting — and would get people talking.

It isn’t so much teaching him how to use it, as teaching him how to use it properly. And the lessons continue even today. There is a difference between tweeting and tweeting in a way that people can respond to and enjoy properly. ~Evan Hadfield

Evan continued to work with his dad on how to make his content more remarkable — up to and including suggesting the Space Oddities cover, and working on securing the rights and getting the video edited.
Chris Hadfield is arguably the most effective promoter for space travel since human beings first landed on the moon. But he couldn’t have done it without his behind-the-scenes help — the “entreproducer” who understood how to make it rain.
In other words, Evan was the one in charge of guiding his dad’s presence and keeping the Seriously Cool factor cranked up to 11.
This is the role a professional content strategist or new breed copywriter can play for you.
You might have amazing abilities. Maybe you’re the equivalent of a space station commander in their field.
But that doesn’t mean you understand anything about what makes content memorable.
It’s possible you’ll still be the one who writes at least some of the words. (It was Chris Hadfield who actually wrote all of the tweets; Evan just provided the guidance and took care of a lot of housekeeping tasks.)
The words matter, but the strategy matters even more.

• Understanding what the audience wants.
• Understanding how different formats work together.
• Understanding what makes content shareable.
• Understanding how content creates the overarching message you want.
• Understanding how to drive the behavior you need, whether it’s a sale, an email opt-in, or international support for the planet’s patchwork of space programs.

When you hire a copywriter or content strategist, you may be paying for their wonderful words (or video and audio skills, as the case may be). But remember — you’re also paying for their rainmaker hat.
Keep the world’s coolest person in mind when you’re looking for a writer for your website. What you need is someone who knows how to make you remarkable and memorable.
Image by NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

About the author

Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone is co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Sonia on Twitter and Google+.

CMS, Content Management System

Knowledge Center

CMS Comparison: Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress

• Article ID: 1052
• Last updated on April 4, 2013
• Authored by: Rackspace Support

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If creating a website for your business is on the horizon, you may be wondering which content management system (CMS) is the best choice for you. Here’s a look at three of the most widely-used ones. All three are open-source software, each developed and maintained by a community of thousands. Not only are all three free to download and use, but the open-source format means that the platform is continuously being improved to support new Internet technologies. With all of these systems, basic functions can be enhanced ad infinitum with an ever-expanding array of add-ons, contributed from their respective communities.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here; it depends on your goals, technical expertise, budget and what you need your site to do. For a simple blog or brochure-type site, Wordpress could be the best choice (while very friendly for non-developers, it’s a flexible platform also capable of very complex sites). For a complex, highly customized site requiring scalability and complex content organization, Drupal might be the best choice. For something in between that has an easier learning curve, Joomla may be the answer.
When you have questions or need help, will you be able to find it easily? With all of these systems, the answer is yes. Each has passionate, dedicated developer and user communities, making it easy to find free support directly through their websites or through other online forums or even books. In addition, paid support is readily available from third-party sources, such as consultants, developers and designers. Each of these systems shows long-term sustainability and longevity; support for them will continue to be readily available for the foreseeable future. The more time and effort you are willing and able to invest into learning a system, the more it will be able to do for you. With both Wordpress and Joomla, you can order a wide range of services and options off the menu to suit your needs; with Drupal, you’ll be in the kitchen cooking up what you want for yourself, with all of the privileges of customization that entails.
See the comparison chart below for more insight into the differences in these top content management systems. Still not sure? Download each of the free platforms and do a trial run to help you decide.

	Drupal	Joomla	Wordpress
Homepage	www.drupal.org	www.joomla.org	www.wordpress.org
About	Drupal is a powerful, developer-friendly tool for building complex sites. Like most powerful tools, it requires some expertise and experience to operate.	Joomla offers middle ground between the developer-oriented, extensive capabilities of Drupal and user-friendly but more complex site development options than Wordpress offers.	Wordpress began as an innovative, easy-to-use blogging platform. With an ever-increasing repertoire of themes, plugins and widgets, this CMS is widely used for other website formats also.
Example Sites	Community Portal: Fast Company, Team Sugar	Social Networking: MTV Networks Quizilla Education: Harvard University Restaurant: IHOP	Social Networking: PlayStation Blog News Publishing: CNN Political Ticker Education/Research: NASA Ames Research Center News Publishing:The New York Observer
Installation	Drupal Installation Forum	Joomla Installation Forum	Wordpress Installation Forum
Ease of Use	Drupal requires the most technical expertise of the three CMSs. However, it also is capable of producing the most advanced sites. With each release, it is becoming easier to use. If you’re unable to commit to learning the software or can’t hire someone who knows it, it may not be the best choice.	Less complex than Drupal, more complex than Wordpress. Relatively uncomplicated installation and setup. With a relatively small investment of effort into understanding Joomla’s structure and terminology, you have the ability to create fairly complex sites.	Technical experience is not necessary; it’s intuitive and easy to get a simple site set up quickly. It’s easy to paste text from a Microsoft Word document into a Wordpress site, but not into Joomla and Drupal sites.
Features	Known for its powerful taxonomy and ability to tag, categorize and organize complex content.	Designed to perform as a community platform, with strong social networking features.	Ease of use is a key benefit for experts and novices alike. It’s powerful enough for web developers or designers to efficiently build sites for clients; then, with minimal instruction, clients can take over the site management. Known for an extensive selection of themes. Very user-friendly with great support and tutorials, making it great for non-technical users to quickly deploy fairly simple sites.
Caching Plug-ins	Pressflow: This is a downloadable version of Drupal that comes bundled with popular enhancements in key areas, including performance and scalability.	JotCache offers page caching in the Joomla 1.5 search framework, resulting in fast page downloads. Also provides control over what content is cached and what is not. In addition, page caching is supported by the System Cache Plugin that comes with Joomla.	WP-SuperCache: The Super Cache plugin optimizes performance by generating static html files from database-driven content for faster load times.
Best Use Cases	For complex, advanced and versatile sites; for sites that require complex data organization; for community platform sites with multiple users; for online stores	Joomla allows you to build a site with more content and structure flexibility than Wordpress offers, but still with fairly easy, intuitive usage. Supports E-commerce, social networking and more.	Ideal for fairly simple web sites, such as everyday blogging and news sites; and anyone looking for an easy-to-manage site. Add-ons make it easy to expand the functionality of the site.