30 ways to make your content marketing really work
TRANSCRIPT
Kevin Gibbons, Co-Founder & CEO, [email protected]
30 Ways to Make Your Content Marketing REALLY Work
2www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
What are the biggest challenges in content marketing
right now?
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We Asked 50 Top Marketers - The Commons Answers Included:
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1. Lack of time and/or budget2. Scaling quality content3. Mixing up content types4. Proving the value of content 5. Getting your team fully involved 6. Generating high quality engagement & coverage7. Sign-off and approval8. etc...
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But… What if your content marketing
just “worked”?
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1) Figure Out What Content Marketing Success Looks Like to You...
You have a strategy aligned with your business goals, with a clear plan on how to
achieve them...
You produce creative content which your audience loves and attracts more of
the ‘right kind’ of prospects (those who buy!)
You earn outstanding coverage from publishers, media and social influencers
You continually increase online revenue via organic search and other channels,
to acquire new customers and retain existing ones
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
2) Break Down the Silos...
Make sure you create an action plan based on these 3 key pillars of content marketing:
1. Strategy - SEO & content strategy2. Creativity - Outstanding content
creation3. Promotion - Digital PR & social media
coverage
Being aligned in all 3 of these areas is vital in order to hit the sweet spot of content marketing results.
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Strategy - You Need to Understand Where You Are,
Where to Go & How to Get There...
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3) Before You Start, Get the Right People on the Bus!
Content marketing requires a team approach, you can’t be good at everything, so consider the skillsets that you need:
1. Content Strategist2. SEO Strategist3. Content Writer4. Designer5. Developer6. Digital PR Specialist 7. Paid Social Specialist8. Account/Project Manager
Some of these roles may be combined, or freelance, at first - but ultimately if you want to be strong in all areas of strategy, creation and promotion in order to achieve the best results.
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4) Understand the Brand - What is Your Purpose & Story You Want to Tell?
Base marketing on your core values & how you can change the world!
Nail this and the content ideas become easy...
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5) Understand Who You Are Targeting
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6) What’s the Goal? How Can You Measure & Prove It? Typical ways to measure content performance could include:
● Based on CPL metrics - working backwards from
average order values, conversion rates from visitor to
subscriber to customer…
● Equivalent media spend - how much would traffic to
content via organic, social, referral be worth?
● Digital PR coverage & social engagement - quality,
quantity and relevancy of PR generated
● Reduce customer support / improve conversion rate -
does compliant rate come down? Do sales improve?
However you should consider how content performs for
different purposes - what does it work well for / what is unfair
to expect...
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
7) Create Clear Content Guidelines - What Should You Be Publishing?
● Awareness: Interesting, engaging, fun, entertaining, thought leading content
● Consideration: targeted content around research based keywords
● Action: to help people to buy, subscribe or navigate back to what they liked before
If your content doesn’t fit into these categories, should you be publishing it? Don’t be afraid to say no - being selective is good to keep focused on what’s really important.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
8) Think Bigger - Content Marketing Isn’t a One-Off, You Have to Keep Building On It...
If you have a clear goal from the start, you can start to think bigger with your content marketing.
This is often where things go wrong - don’t get distracted by the shiny new exciting/cool things straight away…
The best results are rarely the big spikes, but those that gradually improve month on month on month.
To achieve this, you don’t need a campaign - you need a strategy to make you a content authority.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
9) Do a Content Audit Before You Create Anything New…
● What content do you have already?● Can you improve it?● What worked best / what didn’t?● What has generated the most traffic in the past?● Where is the social engagement or links coming from?● Your internal site search could be a gold mine!● Give feedback to editors on content performance;
social, traffic, links, pageviews etc…● Have you got an offline magazine? Newsletters?
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10) Produce a Seaonalised Editorial Calendar, You Don’t Need to Reinvent the Wheel
The same topics/events come back around year on year:
● Run content audits to look back at what worked/didn't work
● Research in Buzzsumo what worked best in your industry for competitors and beat them to it for the new year!
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
11) Get Digital PR Involved In Content Strategy, No-One Wants to Play a Numbers Game...
● Who are the top publishers in your industry?● What content do they really want to see?● Do you have a plan on how to increase
domain authority? ● How can you get writers/editors involved
early?● Can you get feedback from publishers on
your idea before you create the content?
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Creativity - to stand out from the crowd
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12) Think Bigger & Differentiate Amongst the Noise - You Want to Be the Source
You need to fight for attention against:
● 347,222 tweets● 4,166,667 FB likes● 300 hours of YouTube video
Every single minute!
Don’t create content for content’s sake…
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13) Create Data-Driven Content to Make It Newsworthy
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14) Be Evergreen - If It Works, Build Upon Your Success
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15) Attract Top of Funnel Traffic With Content That Answers Questions
Research your audience and find out what their pain points are. Trying answering questions on Quora, or community blogs/forums, and turn your most popular answers into more in-depth article content.
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16) Understand What Triggers Google Answers & Leverage It
● The interesting part about Answer boxes is they aren’t always the top organic result.
● Answer boxes are great also because they can have a huge impact on clicks from the search results to your website.
● Answer boxes are also great for branding and visibility within Google search results.
● Use bullet points in how to style articles and this helps to get Google to consider them as the top answer.
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17) If you think content is about YOU, you’re missing the point. When people share content, they share it about themselves not you…
The number one way to get a reaction out of your readers is to make them feel something. Remember, 90% of decisions are made by emotional feeling, not rational.
Make your customer the hero, so they can do the talking for you...
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18) Remember, If You’re Scared to Fail, You’re Playing Too Safe & That’s the Biggest Risk of All
● I don’t want to look stupid...● Why would I share all of this information
if people can then copy it…● What if everyone knows this already...● My competitors will know everything if I
share this…
What people don’t get, is the biggest risk is not doing it!
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Promotion - Become an Authority Within Your Industry
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19) Aim to Become THE Authority Within Your Industry
● Build digital PR relationships to get your content featured on some of the most popular publishers within your vertical
● Build an audience to turn your visitors into regular readers
● Target social influencers to maximise the impact and engagement of content campaigns.
● Leverage paid social advertising & content distribution to amplify content visits and engagement.
Creating great content isn’t enough - sometimes it needs a little push…
With a targeted promotion strategy for content campaigns, you can ensure that you maximise coverage, traffic and readership.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
20) Give Exclusives for Your Content - But Make Sure You’re the Source!
Agreeing an exclusive with a publisher in advance can help to get their buy-in.
Plus it helps with additional outreach afterwards…
e.g. “did you see this article on the dailymail.co.uk? I saw you did something similar last year, perhaps you’d like to cover this?”
But make it 100% clear who the original source is!
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
21) Remember You’re Creating Content Assets to Build An Audience, Not Just Traffic or Links
1. Identify – who is your target audience and where can you find them?
2. Acquire – acquiring traffic to your content, across marketing channels.
3. Nurture – provide content your readers love, in a content hub environment you control.
4. Engage – by providing consistently great content, the goal should be to continually create outstanding & engaging content.
5. Capture – provide useful content upgrades such as free tools, insights, ebooks, reports etc to build your audience.
6. Grow – build real loyalty and advocacy with your readers, which can have a huge benefit in sales further down the customer journey and in scaling word of mouth referrals.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
22) Build Useful Content Upgrades to Capture Your Audience
Once you’ve done the hard work in generating traffic from new visitors, don’t make it difficult for yourself.
Leave them wanting more and give them a reason to get it!
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
23) Recycle Content to Make the Most Out Of It
People like to consume content in different ways, think about how you recycle content into multiple formats.
e.g. you could turn an in-depth research study into
● Series of short-form articles● Data-visualisation image for social
sharing● Infographic● Interactive in-depth content● Email newsletter● Video● Slideshow presentation● Downloadable PDF / Amazon book● etc...
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
24) Build a List of Top Influencers & Publishers in Your Space
Identify who the top publishers and influencers are within your niche - then you can learn from:
● What they’re doing ● What type of content they like● What they don’t like● Who their original sources are
(who influences the influencers)● etc...
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
25) Don’t Just Outreach to Them, Get Them Involved & Make Them Feel Special
Face-to-face is so much better for building real relationships + it’s more fun!
For a street food campaign, we invited top London food bloggers to our Leather Lane office and gave them a lunch to remember.
Rather than outreaching to bloggers, find a way to make them part of your content - then the distribution becomes the easy part!
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
26) Tap Into Egos - People Like to Talk About Themselves & Where They’re From
Find out about the people you’re outreaching to. What are they interested in? Where do they live?
Also play on rivalries - New York vs LA, London vs Manchester, Sydney vs Melbourne etc...
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
27) Linking Out to Relevant Sources Makes You More Credible
You want to show that you’re an authority within your niche. This means you should have links both to and from other sites in your industry.
Also for digital PR if try to be referenced as a credible source alongside other trusted sites, it looks more credible and you don’t want to create an SEO footprint that just links to you and no-one else...
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
28) Explore Finding Relevant Syndication Partners To Help Promote
● Create your own profiles on LinkedIn, Medium.com and re-publish a few days afterwards,
● Understand the big publishers in your niche that syndicate content; e.g. Yahoo Finance
● Submit to Google News and Google Blog Search
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
29) Social Sharing & Paid Amplification Can Boost Awareness & Credibility, But It Doesn’t Get You Extra Links
● Paid social can be great foramplifying content and specifically targeting your audience, just don’t get your hopes up on the SEO value.
● Consider micro-conversions as the main goal, capture email addresses from content upgrades, build your social audience etc
● Make sure you know how much an email or a visit it worth, for example. Then you can scale based on lifetime values, instead of engagement metrics.
It’s no surprise we see stats like this - paid social advertising is still largely direct advertising, where you need to prove the return in the short-term.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
30) Setup Writer Profiles to Build Credibility & Attract Extra Publisher Coverage
● We built a content strategy focused around key topics, hiring
nutritionists & building up their writing profiles to provide authority
content.
● We secured coverage from 93+ authority health and fitness
publishers, with regular writing slots on HuffPost, Men’s Fitness
and Cosmo (also featured in magazine).
● This generated a 144% YoY increase in organic search traffic!
38www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
Summary - Start With the End in Mind...
Make sure you know what success looks like and create an action plan based on these 3 key pillars of content marketing:
1. Strategy - Build a solid platform and action plan
2. Creativity - Create outstanding content 3. Promotion - Generate authority coverage
This way you can maximise results, by combining data-driven analytical strategy, creative content and authoritative promotion.
www.blueglass.co.uk - @kevgibbo
31) Bonus Slide: Leverage Tools to Improve Efficiency & Results
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@kevgibbo
If you have any questions or would like me to send you a copy of the deck please email me...