Persuasive Content Marketing Final Assignment

Floor Aldewereld
Nov 3 · 19 min read

PERCOMA Final Assignment | Florentine Aldewereld 1695572 | The Crews on Medium | November 3th, 2019 | Bex Redford

The Crews logo

The following extensive and analytical content proposal will discuss my key learnings, experiments and trade offs through my content marketing experimentation process for The Crews on Medium. Based on that information, I will propose an advice with a content calender on how The Crews could continue their content marketing on Medium.

This Medium story in the form of the content proposal has been created according to my key insights, and trade-offs that I found while experimenting on the channel. It is a good example of what The Crews could do as far as set-up and outline of a story for a (very) long read on Medium.

Key Learnings

The channel

Medium is a channel where educational, informative but also entertaining articles are written by ‘anyone’, which are then shared for the whole world to read.

KI: Desk research showed that articles on Medium often have images and infographs to visually support the story. Readers are not only attracted to the article, but are also more engaged with the article.Additionally, according to Medium’s data analysts (Larsen, Q., n.d.),the optimal length of a story is 7 minutes.

Medium’s algorithm is hard to crack, and requires a lot of engagement and often a famous name. According to Ms. Cornelly (Cornelly, A., 2018), there are several ways to increase engagement on Medium and therefore to crack the algorithm. Even when using some of these methods, I have had 0 engagement on my channel apart from engagement from my classmates which I consider invalid due to obvious biases.

The methods that I have used to try to gain engagement on my channel and stories are as follows:

  • “Write more”

This helps to ‘revive’ your data every time so the system doesn’t lose it. I posted content every week to in the hopes of my articles getting shown to and noticed by others on the channel which did not work unfortunately. Additionally, Medium has a posting limit which I experienced after posting 7 stories in 9 weeks. This is a big limitation to the channel.

KI: Medium has a posting limit on stories, which limits the writer’s posting schedule and costs valuable time.

  • A push in the beginning

By receiving a lot of claps and reads in the first few hours/days of articles being live, the algorithm is supposed to show other writers your popular work. I consulted my classmates to interact and engage with my first 3 pieces of content to give my profile a push. However, after this, none of my posts received any engagement so this method did not work.

  • Engage with others

When you are active with your profile by engaging with others by reading many articles and clapping for them, the algorithm is supposed to shows others your work which would increase your visiting rate. However, after reading and liking many stories of other writers, none of my articles received engagement other than engagement from my classmates.

KI: Cracking Medium’s algorithm isn’t within the content, but within the profile activities. Essentially, by following and executing these methods I have tried to make all my posted content channel-friendly since the channel friendliness lies within your profiel activities and not within the story.

KI: Being an active profile on Medium, by clapping for, reading and following other stories and writers, writing often and getting a push in the beginning does not have an immediate positive effect on your own stories’ engagement and reading rates.

To conclude, engagement on Medium cannot be won in just 9 weeks, for a new and unknown brand, no matter what kind of content is posted and how active your profile is.

Beta-tests for The Crews on Medium

Beta-tests

There is strategy behind the content that I have posted to make sure that the content proposal and advice is as accurate and as applicable to the business and channel as possible. This strategy consists of beta-tests (shown in infograph).

None of my content has received valid consumer engagement, therefore analyzing the effectiveness of the different content is extremely difficult. That’s why I have done extra research in order to gain more info to support my final statements.

Consumer friendly content

This content is consumer friendly because it gives the consumer value by giving them knowledge on today’s environmental problems. It speaks to their emotions by explaining what the consequences are of these environemental issues. The topic relates to the consumer of The Crews, who is relatively young (approx. 25–40), conscious of their health and the environment, works hard but relaxes ever harder. This story has received 3 reads and 10 claps, but all from fellow classmates which makes this biased data. There is no real consumer engagement on this story. According to Taube (Taube, A., 2015), a full 95% of Medium’s readers are college graduates, and 43% of them earn six figures or more. These readers are young, with half of them in the 18–34 demographic and 70% of them under the age of 50. Therefore, the Medium readers would fit The Crews’ consumer profile quite well.

KI: Content that speaks to the consumer’s emotions and gives them value is most obviously attractive content to the consumer because they get something from it. Therefore, consumer friendly content is good content for The Crews to increase awareness and knowledge among their consumer, on for example environmental issues and their cruise offerings, in order to increase sales.

Channel friendly content

I have made channel friendly content which has the same features as the ‘typical’ successful Medium story that I researched. These are:

  1. Use of images (as header and 1–5 throughout text)
  2. Quotes
  3. Bold and italic use throughout text to highlight sentences
  4. Larger text for subheaders
  5. Spaces in between paragraphs

Due to the algorithm mostly being affected by the profile activities etc., there are no proven ways of content set-up, topics etc. that are ‘channel friendly’. The ‘The New Traveller’ story is channel friendly, because it has all of the above 5 common characteristics of successful Medium stories. Yet again, this content received no valid consumer engagement, so the analysis is based on research. This was, however, the most successful story based on data due to it’s 7 reads, and 59 claps (from classmates) but that is because I shared this story with classmates to crack Medium’s algorithm.

KI: Successful stories on Medium mostly have similar characteristics (mentioned above) which, when applied, can best speak to and engage the consumer.

Client friendly content

The client friendly content introduces the consumer to The Crews, by explaining it’s core values, a summary of the activities, addressing who the cruise ‘is for’, showing and comparing and lastly by addressing the price of the cruise. It incorporates the marketing objectives of consumer awareness, showing and comparing and pricing while also informing the consumer about what The Crews is with use of text, images and infographs. This content received no valid consumer engagement, it only received engagement from my classmates who I shared the content with to crack the algorithm.

KI: Content that informs the consumer about The Crews, while addressing the marketing objective topics, can be beneficial when it has engagement, in order to reach the marketing objectives.

Title

To experiment what effect a title has on a story’s reads, AB testing was done on content 4. I have posted the same story twice, with different titles. The first title has our brand name in it and is a ‘typical’ title that quickly explains the story topic; “The Crews: Ports of destination”. The second story, has a more active, somewhat mysterious and non-brand related title; “You have to visit these places with us!”. Neither stories sparked any engagement so a direct analysis of the result is not possible. When researching other titles on Medium, I found that these are generally more serious and topic-related, they usually don’t name the brand or writer of the story and they are not specifically mysterious or active.

KI: Generally, Medium story titles are topic-related, slightly serious and informative. This seems to be a common trend, which therefore might be the most effective title-method to attract readers and increase engagement.

Crazy content

Since the first 4 content stories received 0 valid consumer engagement, I decided to beta-test ‘crazy’ content that could spark interest just by its title and topic and therefore increase my following and engagement on my other stories. The “All the disasters that can occur on a cruise ship” story is a very honest, somewhat scary and sinical piece of content where topics that are usually not discussed by a cruise line are discussed. Unfortunately, most likely because of Medium’s algorithm, this story also did not have any claps, or even reads.

KI: Crazy content can be good to test your audience and consumers on their alertness and interest in the brand on Medium as well as entertaining them in a new and surprising or shocking way. However, when the algorithm does not help you it will still have no effect.

Visuals

Visuals are a big part of a reader’s engagement, aestatic pleasure and understanding of the topic while reading a story. An AB test has been done to see whether the consumers prefer a story with or without visuals. One story of “All the disasters that can occur on a cruise ship”, which was also another beta-test, has images and the others didn’t. Neither story had engagement, so again an data-based analysis is impossible. Research of successfull Medium stories however shows that most stories always have a ‘front-photo’ which shows as a preview with the title, and about 1–5 other visuals like infographs and high-quality images throughout the text, .

KI: Most successful Medium stories have about 1–5 visuals/images, of which one is a ‘front-photo’ that is placed right under the title and shows as a preview with the title. This visual/image is attractive and alluring to lure in readers.

Copy

To test if the way that I’ve spoken to the audience works, an AB test has been done on the copy. The copy used for all stories corresponds with The Crews’ tone of voice which is adventurous, young and conscious. However, for this AB test a second copy of the same “The Crews crew” had a different tone that is older, more serious and a shorter copy by leaving ‘extra’ and sometimes unnecessary information out. Unfortunately, neither stories had any engagement, so an analysis is not possible.

KI: However, The Crews has a tone of voice which they should always stick to to be true to their own brand. As far as the length of the text and additional ‘fun’ information in stories, this could be different for each story according to the topic.

Least successful

The least successful content based on data would be content that does not receive any engagement. However, this has happened to all of my data after I stopped sharing my stories with my classmates. Although I have also shared the content with strangers in the environment, travel etc. industry via Twitter and Instagram, this has not helped increase engagement. So, when it’s based on data, the last 4 stories (including AB test copies) are the least successful based on data.

The appendix contains the Google Analytics data for the www.thecrews.mystikingly.com website. This data was not used, apart from using it as additional insights in content creation, because none of the results came from the Medium channel.

Biggest trade-offs

The algorithm on Medium has shown that it is not easy to crack, especially within 9 weeks. The content that has been posted has had 0 valid consumer engagement, which doesn’t allow the beta-test and AB-tests to be fully completed and analyzed. It is hard to establish what the best content and channel strategy is for The Crews on Medium.The proposed content strategy is therefore mostly be based on research and assumptions. This leads us to the first, and overall covering problem and trade-off that The Crews would face with Medium, which includes not only the channel, but also their marketing objectives and consumers.

  1. Marketing objectives vs. the channel: awareness and message

The Crews’ marketing objectives that would fit the Medium channel are:

  • Raise consumer interest and awareness about The Crews and get them to sign up for the waiting list
  • Establishing the message angle (show or show and compare)

Medium has a complicated algorithm which caused the content of the new brand to be neglected and missed by the consumers. The trade-off here is that these two marketing objectives are channel-friendly topics for , but the algorithm works against new stories of new writers.

1.2. Marketing objective and the channel: price

One of The Crews’ marketing objectives is to establish a price for their 14 and 20 day trips. They ask to receive responses from consumers on which prices they prefer out of €150-€180 for 14 days, and €200-€250 for 20 days. Although this question has been proposed in the client-friendly content, this marketing objective does not fit the channel, as Medium is a mostly informative and educational platform where long articles are written and readers comment with their feedback and comments on the topic. Medium is not a platform to ask about price preferences to the readers.

1.3 Marketing objective and the channel: region/countries

The Crews explains that they want to establish in which regions/countries they should launch first. However, if the algorithm would ‘allow’ the stories, apart from asking the readers on Medium where they are from which is not an ideal option, Medium doesn’t give this data information out about their readers. Therefore, using Medium to reach this objective is not possible via data.

This overall covering trade-off between the marketing objectives and the channel has made it difficult to get further in the content proposal, because there were no direct results of the beta-tests except for research and assumptions. Because of this, there are also not many other trade-offs, because there are no results to base the beta-tests and key insights on apart from assumptions and research.

As a marketing objective, The Crews wants to discover through their content which message is most appealing to the consumer out of the following two:

  1. Showing what The Crews has to offer (showing)
  2. Showing how The Crews is different from others (showing + comparing)

The consumer however does not have any prior information and knowledge on The Crews and they don’t have a personal investment in the brand unless they somehow get value or something in return for engaging with the stories and the brand.

Advice

This advice is divided in multiple segments as it addresses the solutions to solving the trade-offs with help of the key insights, research and experimenting.

Channel

Since the algorithm, regardless of how good the content is and how active the profile is, can work against the brand in their content marketing strategy my main advice based on all of the previous data, findings and insights is to not make Medium the main channel for the content strategy. The reason why is because it is very time consuming, both with writing and creating the stories but also with trying to crack the algorithm by using the previously mentioned methods, and with the amount of time you need to invest to finally grab the fruits of your labor. The reason why I’m not advising to fully eliminate the channel as well, is because while researching other successful Medium writers and stories I found that they can spread their message in an informative way via Medium to a lot of people across the world.

The Medium channel has a potential to be beneficial to The Crews in reaching their marketing objectives and consumer targeting, however this requires the investment of time and effort.

  • Write often
  • Period of standstill

So that the data revives and relives again when stories are being written again.

  • A push in the beginning
  • Write in series

The algorithm sees series as full articles.

  • Profile activity

Additionally, my advice is to also use other online channels for an optimal result of the marketing objectives and consumer targeting. The Crews should continue posting content on Medium while also posting content on other channels such as Instagram and Twitter, which are quicker and less serious so to say, and also refer to their Medium stories on those. In this way, when the algoritm is cracked with the activity of the brand on Medium there is a lot of content already live for the new followers to read. Additionally, when The Crews gets a following on other channels and refers to Medium, they could increase a following there. In this way, the two roads, or one of these roads, can still lead to engagement on the channel.

An out-of-the-box way to improve the engagement and awareness outside of cracking the algorithm is by ‘hiring’ a Medium influencer (famous writer) with a large following to post content about The Crews to increase awareness and redirect them to The Crews’ Medium profile and stories.

The Crews should also use Google Analytics to get more data on the website visitations; demographics of visitors, where they come from online, how long they stay on the website etc. This information has not been used for this proposal because there was no data.

Consumer

Since the beta-test data did not give any information on which is most appealing, this advice is based on assumptions and research.

The consumers on Medium wants value with reading an article, which for The Crews can be value in the shape of knowledge about for example what effects it has to support local communities. It’s essential that the content speaks to the consumers emotions. The Medium consumers are in the right age range for The Crews, in regards to their target audience so it is beneficial to use The Crews’ tone of voice, with a young and somewhat sinical edge as copy.

The consumer does not have prior knowledge or information about The Crews so showing what it has to offer is key in increasing brand awareness and engagement. Additionally, The Crews’ USP is that they are a ‘green’ ship, with a high focus on the environment, health and relaxation. It is crucial that the consumers know how they are different and therefore it’s advised to to show and compare. A way to do this is by posting content that connects with The Crews’ values and offerings but not mentioning The Cruise. In this way, the content can speak to all kinds of consumers. This interest will result in a following of the profile and eventually, contact with the brand.

Content

The content on Medium doesn’t have an immediate effect on the algorithm, however research on successful Medium content has brought forward some common characteristics that I advice The Crews follows for their content:

  • Use of images (as header and 1–5 throughout text)
  • Quotes
  • Bold and italic use throughout text to highlight sentences
  • Larger text for subheaders
  • Spaces in between paragraphs

Marketing objectives

*These solutions are written as if the algorithm is working well*

These marketing objectives should be incorporated in client friendly content that suits the channel and the consumer.

  • Raise consumer interest and awareness about The Crews and get them to sign up for the waiting list
  • Establishing the message angle (show or show and compare)

Both of these are best to combine with consumer friendly content in order for it to be attractive and engaging to the consumer. This can be done by giving something back (value) to the consumer in the articles while raising brand awareness, such as telling them about how The Crews supports local communities and how this affects these communities and the travellers. To establish the message angle, AB testing can be done to see which of two articles engages more and has a longer reading time, where one copy just shows and the other shows and compares.

  • Establish a price for the 14 and 20 day trips

Althought asking about the price does not fit the channel, there are other client, consumer and channel friendly ways to go about this. For example, by AB testing articles with price information in it so see the reading time per article.

  • Find out in what region/country The Crews should launch first

This information can’t be collected with Medium, but it can be collected with Google Analytics. By tracing the links in the article that go back to www.thecrews.mystrikingly.com with GA, results on the regions of the users who click on this will be collected.

Content Calendar

The porposed content calender is very strategical and analytical. The content is focused on solving the marketing objectives, trade offs and cracking the algorithm of Medium. However, this content is proposed with the expectation that the stories receive engagement.

Some justifications, all proposed content follows the content advice guidelines and times of posting differ to adjust to different time zones.

Proposed Content Calendar part 1
Proposed Content Calendar part 2

Examples of content

The following are examples of the proposed content. The content are not the entire stories, but the first few paragraphs, with visuals etc. to show what the content would and could look like.

  1. Proposed content of week 1: “A day in your life on The Crews”.

2. Proposed content of week 7: “ How to make your dinner table ‘green’.”

Appendix

Posted content

Account: the.crews

Story 1: But how is our earth polluted?

Story 2: The New Traveller

Story 3: We are The Crews

AB TEST 1.1 Story 4: The Crews: Ports of destination

AB TEST 1.2 Story 5: You have to visit these places with us!

AB TEST 2.1 Story 6: All the disasters that can occur on a cruise ship (without images)

AB TEST 2.2 Story 7: All the disasters that can occur on a cruise ship (with images)

AB TEST 3.1 Story 8: The Crews crew (short copy)

AB TEST 3.2 Story 8: The Crews crew (long copy)

Data

  1. AB test tracker
AB Test Tracker

2. Google Analytics campaign click-throughs

The following screengrab shows the Google URL’s that have had a click through from the content to The Crews’ website. One of my links got a click through (Test_Floor_1) however, this was a click through from myself via a different account to check wether it worked.

Google Analytics campaign click-throughs

3. Google Analytics website visitor demographics

Google Analytics website visitor demographics

4. Medium data insights

The following screengrab shows the data that Medium provides for it’s stories. These views were by classmates, who were on my story for 35 seconds which shows that they did not read the article.

Medium data insights

5. Medium data insights 2.0

Medium data insights 2.0

References

Main sources of information about for stock-free images, The Crews and the Medium channel.

Copyblogger. (n.d.). How to Write Magnetic Headlines [Blog post]. Retrieved October 18, 2018, from https://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/

Cornell, A. (2019, December 24). What does the Algorithm of Medium Hold? [Article]. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://writingcooperative.com/what-does-the-algorithm-of-medium-hold-1e73dfaa6088

Crowe, A. (2016, August 3). Growth Hacking Your Content on Medium [Blog post]. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/12-step-guide-growth-medium/167771/#close

Davaney, E. (2016, April 14). How to Use Medium: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing, Publishing & Promoting on the Platform [Blog post]. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-medium

Denchak, M. (2018, January 22). Ocean Pollution: The Dirty Facts. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ocean-pollution-dirty-facts

Digital Marketing Institute. (n.d.). Should Content Marketers Be Using Medium? [Blog post]. Retrieved September 25, 2019, from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-eu/blog/06-02-2018-should-content-marketers-be-using-medium

Larson, Q. (n.d.). How to write Medium stories people will actually read [Blog post]. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-write-medium-stories-people-will-actually-read-92e58a27c8d8/

Maritime Injury Guide. (2018, November 6). Cruise Ship Safety Statistics. Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://www.maritimeinjuryguide.org/blog/cruise-ship-safety-statistics/

Mental Floss. (n.d.). 11 Scientific Benefits of Being Outdoors. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70548/11-scientific-benefits-being-outdoors

Nikolovska, H. (2019, May 22). 27 Surprising Insomnia Statistics You Should Know. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://disturbmenot.co/insomnia-statistics/

Taube, A. (2015, April 24). Part Publisher, Part Social Network, Medium Is Building The Future Of Brand Storytelling [Article]. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.nativeadvertising.com/part-publisher-part-social-network-medium-is-building-the-future-of-brand-storytelling/

The Manifest. (2018, November 14). The Do’s and Don’ts of Publishing on Medium.com [Article]. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from https://medium.com/@the_manifest/the-dos-and-don-ts-of-publishing-on-medium-com-8fbde6667932

TheWorldCounts. (2015, March 15). Earth is amazing! Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/amazing_environmental_facts

Williams, E. (2018, April 5). The Medium Model [Blog post]. Retrieved September 21, 2019, from https://blog.medium.com/the-medium-model-3ec28c6f603a

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