Grow Your Member Base with a Compelling Content

Marketing Strategy

Presented at the 2013Texas Networking Conference .com

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/sarahworthy. Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahmworthyEmail Sarah at sarah@authorizedcv.com 

Presentation Topic: Grow Your Member Base with a Compelling Content Marketing Strategy Sarah will outline the major pieces needed for a successful content strategy for membership organizations. She'll answer your questions about what is web content marketing and how to get started, as well as how to keep your content fresh and engaging for your members and volunteers.

Sarah will also bring examples from numerous nonprofit organizations that she's worked with to develop and implement web content strategies to give you real world case studies.

Takeaways:

1) Sarah will give you specific tips to help your Assistance League chapter increase memberships and increase traffic to your thrift stores.

2) You'll learn what works best, what stats you should be measuring and the (free and low-tech) tools she recommends for nonprofit organizations.

3) You'll learn what other nonprofit organizations are doing successfully with their content marketing and how to apply it to your web marketing.

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.comSarah M. Worthy | @sarahmworthy | CXO,

1. Content Marketing Overview2. Content Tailored to Your Members3. Tips and Tools to Keep It Fresh

Our Agenda

.com

Thanks for Coming Out This Morning!

--> Briefly discuss the definition of content marketing, and why it works so well to attract and retain an audience (your members, your community, your own staff and volunteers)

--> Outline the major pieces of a Content Strategy: a) audience personas --> who are you trying to reach and engage with? b) setting goals --> ie: retain members, attract new members, increase thrift store traffic/sales c) editorial calendar --> consistency is key and this helps you plan ahead / know what’s needed d) measure and adjust --> develop a baseline, measure your results regularly, identify where you are doing it well and do more of that and do less of what’s not working

tip: don’t be afraid to test new things, and test old things that worked | stopped working after a while because what’s old can also be retro/interesting

--> Avoiding stale content syndrome | write compelling content that grows your member base

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How can we keep it interesting when our message is the same

from year to year?How can we increase

memberships and member engagement?

How can we increase traffic to our thrift

stores?

How can we increase memberships and member

engagement?

How can we appeal to future members?

Sound Familiar?

Some questions I got from Vicki and Colleen about your top questions about content marketing.

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Great Content Marketing is Inclusive

Nonprofits have a distinct advantage with content marketing, and that's because you have a unique story that's not the "status-quo" of the corporate revenue/money first motto. Much like the U.S. military - they're selling hero-making, and freedom. And they want you to join along.

This message is much more inclusive than the typical ones you see - however this trend is shifting as even the big corporate brands are seeing the real value of converting a customer into a member and raving fan within their organization and not just converting new sales of their products.

The main thing to keep in mind is that the content should grab the attention of the target audience by giving them value for their time. The audience should be in a position to answer the question, ‘What can I take away from this message? What have I gained from the time I invested in viewing/reading this content?’

Defined:“Content marketing is a marketing technique ofdeveloping and publishing:--> relevant, valuable content (to your audience)--> that attracts and engages with --> your clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving action that aligns with your Organizations primary Goals.”

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AttitudeCounts!

"Great content meets two criteria: It’s useful and it’s interesting."

- Sonia Simone,Chief Marketing Officer at Copyblogger Media, LLC

SEO + Your Audience’s Interest

Also - these 2 lolcats are about attitude, which attitude do you have when you’re writing content for your members?

This isn’t to judge anyone or say you’re doing it wrong. This is to help change your perspective as technology is changing our ability to drive conversations within our community.

Are you looking to steal your members’ hearts? Or are you here for your own amusement, instead of theirs?

http://copyblogger.com is a great place for copywriting and writing for the web resources/help guides.

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Outline YourStory Arc

Measure &Improve

Get to KnowYour Members

Write Out Your Plan

CreateYour Goals

Strategic Components

--> Outline the major pieces of a Content Strategy: a) setting goals --> ie: retain members, attract new members, increase thrift store traffic/sales b) audience personas --> who are you trying to reach and engage with? c) editorial calendar --> consistency is key and this helps you plan ahead / know what’s needed d) your story arc is where you identify what it is that you are doing, what’s valuable and interesting to your members that also fits your goals. e) measure and adjust --> develop a baseline, measure your results regularly, identify where you are doing it well and do more of that and do less of what’s not working

start with a strategy and also holistically, tie it into your current campaigns and have a good foundation in place to build upon

If you think about it, you may realize that nonprofits (probably yours) have been at this type of marketing for years.Content marketing products take the form of annual reports, custom magazines, print or online newsletters, blog post, articles, success stories, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video, in person events, ebooks, research report and email.

Where the process can go awry is the lack of a strategy.

James Keady, digital marketing manager for McLaren Automotive, a British automotive manufacturer, said this:"Content is the voice of your brand, and it is therefore important to allocate the respect, investment, and focus it requires. Creating great content is difficult, and delivering great content consistently through established processes is complex. However, this is what is required if you want to take your brand from good to great in today's communication environment."

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CreateYour Goals

What Do You Want?

I cannot stress enough the importance of this step - setting goals, and I’ll talk a little about how to do that next, is crucial to accomplishing your organization’s mission.

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CreateYour Goals

Develop SMART Goals

SMART Goals - Let’s talk a moment about what these terms means: specific measurable achievable time and realistic...

Your goals help you ensure that your content aligns with your your organization’s big picture goals, and provide the framework for measuring and adjusting your strategy over time.

Goals should be SMART S = what needs to be achieved for successM can you measure it?A is it possible?R is it possible for YOU/Your .Org (resources, time, money)? T is it timebound?

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Exercise: How Would You Make These Goals “SMART”?

CreateYour Goals

I’m using this example because I thought now would be a perfect opportunity to push your brains a little this morning, now that you’ve had some coffee. Let’s apply the SMART goals practice to these last goals from the AL Montgomery chapter.

Anyone want to volunteer to suggest some better ways to outline these goals?

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Write Your Plan

Identifying Your Priorities

your editorial calendar is where you start writing down your plan, and keep track of content that you’ll create along with deadlines, content ownership (who’s making each item?), and metrics as you collect them on content marketing campaign results.

-> help you see the content you need to create over the next several days, weeks, and months, -> helps you list out content themes and distribute them by channel (e.g., a calendar for your newsletter and another for Facebook), by audience (e.g., how you'll communicate with parents this month, versus communicating with teachers), or by program (e.g., so you see how different programs are included throughout your communications channels).-> help you prioritize. You probably can‘t do everything that‘s being asked of you. You can‘t even do everything that you want to do. By mapping out in a grid or on a calendar your opportunities to communicate, you start to see the limitations that are really on you.help you see what’s working and what’s not over timethe simple solution is a shared Google Docs spreadsheet. Ours uses a new tab for each month primary type, a list of channels, and I also use a tool called Asana

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Write Your Plan

Copy my Template - http://bit.ly/content-calendar

Editorial Calendar

you can use my template or try something like asana.com

don’t over think your editorial calendar. you want to have a roadmap that has flexibility built in in case you need to make unexpected pit stops or you hit a detour in your path. By doing this work now, you’ll find it easier to stay on target towards achieving your goals.

This roadmap gives you a place to refer back to, months from now and years from now, and see how far off you are from your plan. Then you can evaluate why you’re off track, if you are, and quickly find your way back to the guided path you’ve put together earlier.

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Your Plan Provides Consistency & Focus

Weekly

Monthly

Daily

Write Your Plan

one thing that I’ve learned from experience as a digital marketer is that consistency matters most

if your supporters are used to a certain date for released content, try and have something fairly regularly.

think about how music and videos are released on the same day every week Establishing a Communication Schedule

This is an example of how to think about it, and you don’t need to feel obligated to match this specific schedule. Balance your content generation with your .Org’s resources plus the needs and wants of your members.

Daily - twitter updates, user generated content, alerts related to your cause

Weekly - new blog post, photo gallery, short video, offline media buys, participation in an event related content, website updates

monthly - this is where you want to produce something significant, maybe it’s a monthly impact report, newsletter, whitepaper/research paper, offline gathering like a twetup,

Quarterly - research-based whitepaper, e-book series, produce a video series, create an animated infographic, contest or sweepstakes winners, talk about your cause (case study)

bi-annual experiential event/content, print brochure/PDF to download

Annually - host a roundtable and record the event, produce an annual industry whiepaper or ebook, speak or present at an annual conference, announce and launch a contest or sweepstakes, update web presence with new story, new tool set, create and launch an iPhone app/Facebook app

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Who Do You Want to Act? Get to KnowYour Members

First, Identify your audience - develop personas to truly understand the people who are interested in giving to your cause. Identify Your Ideal Donor, Volunteer, and Board Member

- mapping your audiences’ journey to figure out how someone grows/becomes familiar with your organization - “walk in their shoes” so to speak, for AL, your best members are probably much like you ladies. Think about what you’d want

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Your Target Audience

Capacity to GiveDesire to Give

Desire to Give to Your Cause

Get to KnowYour Members

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Discover Your Members’ Interests

http://bit.ly/donor-templateThis Content Mapping Process is Part of a Free Persona Template:

Get to KnowYour Members

Here’s a free template you can download to help you map your donor’s journey.

Get a template to help with your content mapping process: http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/BarbraGago_Persona_Mapping_Templates.pdf1) Identify who your target audience is 2) what are the questions typically asked - tip* go to your sales / fundraising team and ask them what questions people ask most, have them write down FAQ’s and send to you3) what are the answers to the questions asked, how does your solution fit into the answer?4) prioritize the content 5) find out what content you have that answers those, get that out to your audience6) identify holes, what questions haven’t you answered? 7) create those answers

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"We believe that Life is Too Short to Work at a Boring Company..."

Get to KnowYour Members

in my capacity as the Houston curator at Startup Digest, I can attest to the value of having a clearly defined, niche market to focus on.

our target at the digest is purely those who are involved in their local technology startup scene. This doesn’t mean the restaurant founder or employee at a local energy company can’t subscribe and read the digest, it just means we are listening to the entrepreneurs and developers, the investors ... when we decide what content we’ll share.

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Get to KnowYour Members

startupdigest.com/Houston

and here’s a real life example of how that translates, tactically, to include your team. keep in mind, I’m a volunteer - and I joined because I agree with what the digest is doing, so they trained me and I’ll talk about that a little bit later on too, however part of that training was who our audience is and what kind of content is ideal, what’s good, and what’s definitely not ok.

knowing my audience is technology/entrepreneur focused helps me select content and events to share with my subscribers even if I don’t really know all of my subscribers.

This way, when I look at the vast, seemingly overwhelming number of events that happen in Houston - I’m able to easily identify and filter the events for my organization’s audience: people in Houston’s tech startup community.

Focusing your conversations down to just your ideal audience members helps you prioritize your activities and which channels you use.

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Outline YourStory Arc

one of the questions posed earlier was about how to keep your messages “fresh” year after year...

Here’s my tip: remember the Bible, and going to church. Who here’s bored with Christmas? Easter?

Sure, some Sunday sermons could be a little boring. But that’s not because the core message inside the Bible wasn’t valuable to me - it was just delivered at a time when I didn’t really want to listen to it.

Churches have a 52 week content marketing story guide that they pretty much stick to year end and year out. Some of the discussion about churches losing relevancy with the younger generation has nothing to do with this “theme” schedule, in my opinion, but more in the lack of adapting to changing wants and needs from their community.

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Your Story Arc

Resolution

Conflict

Suspense

The Problem

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@SpaceUpHou Story Arc

Resolution

Conflict

Suspense

The Problem

Story Arc over time to ramp up for our annual conference each year We focus on the key things our audience loves: space, robots, astronauts, and Star Wars. (We have lots of Trekkie fans too!)

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Outline YourStory Arc

Get to KnowYour Members

Write Out Your Plan

CreateYour Goals

You Are Here:

Measure &Improve

I went through the last four components relatively briefly, and that’s because I want to focus on the measurement of engagement using your website and other web tools, like Google Analytics.

This is a huge topic, web analytics, and so I’ve included links to resources for you all when you download a copy of the presentation from slideshare.

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How Do You Measure Engagement? Measure &

Improve

image source: http://science.kukuchew.com/

We’re going to first focus on the basic areas of engagement -- who’s involved with your organization in some way?

And this can become very complex, depending on how much data you’re collecting about each individual member and how large your organization’s member base is.

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Website Traffic

What do You Measure?

New Members

Store Traffic

Renewals ProgramParticipation

LifelongMembers

Renewals

FamilyStats

RecurringDonations

VolunteerTime

MajorDonors

Everything??!!

how do you pick from all the ways you can measure someone interacting with you... I didn’t even include social media channels

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Measure & Improve

PICK 1 THING

So let’s figure out how to narrow this down. Each of you has your own, personal experience with being introduced and eventually coming to a leadership position with Assistance League.

How did you get there? Why did you start on the path you’re on now, and what kept you on it? Asking questions like this will help you identify what you should be measuring.

Why are you engaging? Why do you volunteer your time, and donate your money... Show of hands - who spent more than $20 to be here? $100?

Ask yourself what could have made it better at each step? And write that down!

Don't forget, think how can you use your experience and now inside knowledge of AL and your chapter, and your community.How can you change that experience for the better.

What did you like? What didn't you like?

What have you experienced elsewhere that you really liked and didn't much care for?Do this - pick one thing to tweak more to how you wished it had been and measure to see what happens. It sounds simple, it is simple - the best strategies are simple.

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Measure to identify -> Preferences-> Wants-> Needs

CMHouston.org

Measure & Improve

A/B testing doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. Here’s an example from the Children’s Museum of Houston, who I’ve worked with in the past. They’re always testing. Here, they tested placement of the girl, where the tickets and hours buttons are, and the right side email newsletter.

This is a great example for you to try. What’s one thing you want more action from your members? Try putting a big call to action button for that item in the upper right side of your website. See if you increase conversions.

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Join:http://www.google.com/nonprofits/join/

Easy Tutorials:http://www.google.com/nonprofits/learning/

getting-started.html

Measure & Improve

What kinds of things do you measure? 26

http://bit.ly/nten-2013-engagementFree Report on Data and Engagement:

Measure & Improve

here’s a great report that just came out and it was a study on the data that membership organizations are collecting, how they’re using it, and what’s working.

Nonprofits have learned harder lessons as well. NTEN's Hedstrom, for instance, found "measuring participation/engagement is much more complicated than we first imagined, and instead of being able to find a single scale for this, it's likely we'll end up with several segments of community members that are engaged in very different ways."

One group was surprised to see just how riddled with duplicates and inconsistencies its data were. Another organization realized "late in the game" that key fields and, therefore, related reports about two of its most critical areas are not visible in its current Salesforce implementation.

At a fourth nonprofit, "it's become clear we need to operate in a truly member-centric way, but that we [currently] don't. By constantly bringing forward data about what our members want, need and are actually [using], we can no longer rely on anecdotes to make decisions."

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"We have always imagined a 'learning journey' for our members -- becoming more and more engaged over time and eventually becoming donors or supporters in other ways."

- Rebecca Vierhaus with the League of American Orchestras (The League)

Let’s talk about this learning journey and creating it -

align what they want with what you want (your goals) and then develop a content marketing strategy that prioritizes conversations around those common areas/issues/topics.

The League of American Orchestras' (The League) Rebecca Vierhaus told us her organization is "trying to find trends to tie participation to revenue, as well as participation to likelihood of renewing membership or donating....We have always imagined a 'learning journey' for our members -- becoming more and more engaged over time and eventually becoming donors or supporters in other ways. Is this how our members actually engage with us and, if not, what should our strategy be to try and keep them on a 'conveyor belt' towards loyalty and engagement?"

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New Visitor

The Content Marketing “Funnel”

Joins

Renews

Volunteers

Lifelong Fan

The Journey to Create for Growth

Here’s the new “sales funnel” - note how the funnel gets wider -that is symbolic of the quantity of people that are engaged with your organization so wider = more people.

This is an upside down model of the traditional funnel ....

EducationBuilding Relationships by showing you understand their needs, concerns and goals You’re already spending the time to publish content - why not develop/improve your strategy so you know what will result in greater success?

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Adoption Engagement

Retention Task Success

Happiness

HEART Metricshttp://www.rodden.org/kerry/heart

HEART Metrics help you with identifying what to measure around your audience’s engagement with your organization.

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New Visitor

The Content Marketing Funnel

Joins

Renews

Volunteers

Lifelong Fan

The Journey to Create for Growth

Happiness

Engagement

Adoption

Task Success

Retention

It’s not exactly like this - because really what you want is to have all 5 HEART elements at each stage. However, to simplify the path I wanted to show you how to look at why you want to move your members through this guided journey.

By building this type of engagement within your marketing strategy, you’ll find it easier to manage your content marketing day to day, and measure to show success.

EducationBuilding Relationships by showing you understand their needs, concerns and goals You’re already spending the time to publish content - why not develop/improve your strategy so you know what will result in greater success?

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Keeping it Fresh

How do you keep it interesting when your message is basically the same from year to year?

One of the topics for all of our chapters is an appeal for more membership.

Our websites are used for information sites for people who may be looking for a place to volunteer.

We always tell prospective members about our website and that they can get more information from that site. So the question would be, How can we make our message appeal to future members? Most of the chapters also have Thrift Shops that are the basis for most of their financial support of their philanthropic efforts. So, that website should also appeal to the public for their thrift shop worthy donations of clothing, toys, books, etc.

Ways to Engage members:

1) Comment on their posts2) Retweet and Like them3) be helpful4) ask for help5) ask what they want6) encourage members to speak up7) and talk with each other 8) tell them you miss them (notice when they are active and when they’re not as active)9) send personal emails/messages 10) make promises, and keep them11) acknowledge great work12) appreciate your members13) ask open ended questions

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Boring or Perceived Boredom?

Is it? is space really boring? because we’ve found out there’s a lot of people interested in Space still...

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There’s a lot of people who aren’t bored with space...

The goal is to target your message to what your audience wants. Use the 52 week framework, as I mentioned earlier.

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Get Your Members On Board

I started talking about this earlier, with the story of how the startupdigest succeeds best with a well defined target audience.

Get your members, volunteers, staff and anyone else who could be talking about your organization trained and teach them what to say, who to say it to, and why.

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these are a couple of examples of Organizer’s guides, just to demonstrate how this content provides SEO value and gives your members a roadmap.

tell them how they can get more involved and help, and do more

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Show Them Their Impact

StartupWeekend.org

then, show the impact of supporting your organization. 37

"Thou Shalt Not Waste Their Time... "

surveys - when your boss asks for a report last minute and you don’t know, do you send out a survey? your members didn’t want that. - Quality, Brevity, To the Point, Timely/Relevant

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Use Post-It’s to Stay Focused

“3 Things Today”

rule

just my own personal tip to keep from being overwhelmed. 39

Download Free Book Online:www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com

Read Beth Kanter on Curation:http://www.bethkanter.org/

13ntccur8/

here’s two really great resources. The NPO content marketing cookbook is 100% free, and I’ve never been disappointed by the newsletter either.

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Register for these Upcoming Seminars:

Factors Every Nonprofit Website Needs for Effective Online Fundraising

August 13, 2013 - Tuesday - Register On the ESCHouston.org Website

November 19, 2013 - Tuesday - Register On the ESCHouston.org Website

Getting a Handle on Your Nonprofit's Content Marketing Strategy!

Register for one of the upcoming workshops at the Executive Services Corp of Houston.

The workshops are in-person at ESCHouston.org’s offices on Fountainview Dr., near the Galleria.

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Questions?

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Thank youDownload This Presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/sarahmworthy

if you’d like a copy of this presentation, you can download it online to share and print.

I want to thank the Assistants League of Montgomery County, http://assistanceleaguemont-co.org/, for inviting me to present at this year’s Texas Networking Conference.

I also want to thank all of the ladies from the regional Assistants League chapters for your time and attention today.

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http://spacepts.com

http://spaceuphouston.org

http://startupweekend.org

http://startupdigest.com/Houston

http://authorizedcv.com

Sarah M. Worthy | @sarahmworthyhttp://linkedin.com/in/sarahworthy

here’s just some more info about me and some of the different organizations I’m involved with.

Sarah M. Worthy is the CXO, (Chief Experience Officer), and Director of Product at AuthorizedCV, a health IT startup founded here in Houston by two NASA flight surgeons looking to change the way healthcare professionals maintain their credentials and licensure requirements. Sarah has over 13 years of experience creating across a variety of platforms with a strong focus on teaching people how to use technology to do great things in both business and nonprofit industries.

Sarah combines marketing strategy, user experience design, and product management to identify and create engaging online experiences that build audiences for organizations. Sarah's passion for creating great user experiences in the technology industry led to her work with several Houston nonprofit organizations, including Netsquared.org, StartupWeekend.org, StartupDigest.com, and the American Marketing Association nonprofit special interest group.

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