Content Inc

Content, Inc

Great content marketers do two things:

• document their content marketing strategy
• review and consistently refer to the plan regularly

Your unique difference is in how you communicate. Use that to your advantage to build an audience. Find your sweet spot: the intersection of knowledge or skill area plus your passion point.

• make a list of knowledge areas and special skills
• make content for something you are passionate about
• for businesses, choose a customer pain point

Once you pick an area, focus.

Clarify your audience:

who are they?

How do they live an average day?

What is the person's need? What is their informational need and/or pain points?

Why will this person care about us, our products, our services?

To be successful, you have to become indispensable to your audience, focusing on your most defined audience. You can add other audiences later.

Content Titling: find a problem area that no one else is solving and exploit that area with content.

How do you uniquely solve a problem?

If the content doesn't tell a different story, it will likely be ignored. So focus on what your customers want to be and help them get where they really want to go. Become the content your customers want to engage with over everyone else. Forget what your competition is doing and focus on what you are good at; your uniqueness.

If you are not sure what the pain points are, ask your audience. Setup up listening posts:

• one on one conversations
• Search keywords
• web analytics
• social media listening
• customer surveys

"The ultimate content strategy is listening."

Social channels are a great place to build followers, but you have no control over what those companies do with your connections. Only your website is under your control.

 "The easiest way to turn off your community members is to broadcast the same message across multiple channels." Leverage your assets in multiple ways; act differently on different channels.

1. Facebook: provide exclusive content as it is a gated channel
2. Twitter: tell a story through tweets; make use of hashtags and use it as a testing ground for keywords; cover industry events
3. LinkedIn: business publishing platform
4. SlideShare: the YouTube for PowerPoint presentations
5. Instagram: unique, behind the scenes and personal content. Turn followers into sources of content.
6. Pinterest: try pinning your videos, show the achievements of your customers to share some love', share your reading list, and show your personality.
7. Google+: see mashable for ideas
8. YouTube - video delivery channel
9. Vine: video sharing service
10. Tumblr: blogging platform. Use hashtags, post snippets, reblog, and link to your site.
11. Medium: little control over the audience. Use it if you want to share a particular point of view and get rapid feedback.

Make a dedicated plan for each channel (just because you can share doesn't mean you should)

• what is the goal of the channel?
• What is the desired action?
• What is the specific type of content the audience wants in the channel?
• The right tone for the channel?
• What is the ideal velocity?

Native Advertising

Paid search units on Google/Bing. Promoted listings on Twitter. Sponsored content on LinkedIn.

Questions to Ask

1. Are members more likely to buy?
2. Are members more likely to buy new products?
3. Do members stay longer as customers?
4. Do members talk about us on social media?
5. Do members close faster than customers?
6. Do members buy more on average?

Don't create content just for marketing; make something valuable

Build a content calendar:

• date content will be published
• topic/headline
• author
• owner of content
• current status of the content (updates as it moves through publishing channels)

Define your channels, content types, visuals, topic categories, keywords, URLs, calls to action, and audience outcomes.

 Add images to your text content, and make content ungated.

Test your titles. Create 25 titles/headings for your email messages and test each to see which more people opened.

Advertise your content to build subscribers.

Make a list of influencers: who can we reach out to? Who is good and has influence? Can we nurture influencer relationships by getting guest posts, requesting to share a link, asking to be on podcasts, etc.

Subscriber importance hierarchy

1. email subscribers
2. print subscribers
3. LinkedIn connections
4. Twitter subscribers
5. iTunes subscribers
6. Medium/Tumbler/Instagram/Pinterest
7. YouTube
8. Facebook

It would help if you had an e-mail offering, a call to action on the email. This should be your first choice for acquiring leads as you have the most control.

Keywords

Make a spreadsheet for the top 50 phrases and check each phrase to see its rank in Google (i.e. its placement). Compare to last month and show changes over time.

Research keywords with tools like AdWords, Serp Stat, Google Webmaster, Bing Webmaster, and SEO Chats Google Keyword Suggest Tool.

• is the keyword phrase relevant
• are we buying phrases through paid search
• am I already ranking for keyword phrases
• will the new page mention keyword phrases
• how much traffic do we get on a phrase
• am I refining my set of keywords
• is a similar phrase already converting
• are there calls to action on the page
• are there related pages to support an internal link
• will the phrase fit into future content
• is the phrase in the domain name

If you are struggling:

• Selfish content marketing: create content that solves a customer's pain points. Stop talking about your products so much
• you stop: the biggest source of failure is inconsistency
• activity instead of the audience: acquire an audience first
• no Point of View - to be an expert, you must take a stance
• no process -plan upfront, repurpose/create/distribute
• channel silo: paying attention to one channel only will cause you to miss the true power of content marketing
• forgetting employees - your employees give your brand life. Leverage them in creating content.
• Editing - get an editor and use their services.

Blogging Guidelines

Our editorial mission is to ...

• Posts should advance your mission; have a specific takeaway or key thought; logical and interesting; specific posts for your audience.
• Where possible, include real-life examples and/or case studies.
• Use a variety of media.
• Include detailed instructions or specific recommendations.

Further Reading

• 10x Rule by Grant Cardone
• Report on content marketplace options.
• Content, Inc website
• Experiences: the 7th Era of Marketing by Robert Rose and Carla Johnson
• Digital Relevance by Ardath Albee
• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
• Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki
• Unselling and Unmarketing by Scott Stratten
• Sorry for Marketing blog by Jay Acunzo
• Orbit Media blog
• Convince and Convert by Jay Baer
• TopRank Online Marketing by Lee Odden
• Twitter @JoePulizzi