Five Keys to Success for Participation Marketing

Content is King and Kingdom, So What is Next? As companies improve their ability to connect directly with audiences through story-rich content, consumers expect more from brands. Informed buyers want richer content experiences and to become a part of the story itself. Smart marketers are shifting their focus from brand storytelling to inspiring brandividuals to participate in creating stories themselves – content that is meaningful for the brand, contributors and the community. To achieve a competitive content advantage, companies must connect and co-create content experiences with their audiences in meaningful ways. Doing so will inspire even more content participation, audience engagement and advocacy - a clear path to content domination. Participation in Marketing is the democratization of content creation and promotion by co-creating content with subject matter experts, influencers and your community. More than UGC (user generated content) or crowdsourcing, organized content participation and co-creation invests experts in the success of your marketing and your business. To increase the quantity of quality content for marketing, increased content participation is the key. In this guide you will find advice from TopRank Marketing’s experts, tips from major brand marketers and the answers to some of our community’s most burning questions about participation marketing.

“If You Want Your Content to Be Great, Ask Your Community to Participate!”

5 Keys to Success for Participation Marketing

There is No “I” in Content

Benefits of Content Participation: •  Authenticity - The content

contributions come from “real” people

•  Quality - Expertise outside of marketing departments becomes more available

•  Engagement - The act of collaboration creates an experience and can facilitate relationships

•  Scale - Distributing content creation across contributors outside of the marketing department can increase overall quality content production

Story Planning

Activate Content Participants

Co-Create Content

Amplify Content

Performance Optimization

The intersection of what buyers want and what sellers are offering is the sweet spot for storytelling with content. Understanding the unique selling proposition for the brand and how that story will be told through content collaboration is an essential first step for participation marketing. It is not enough to simply document brand marketing goals, but to also understand the goals of participants and the audience you wish to sell to. Planning effective participation marketing programs includes narratives that support customer information needs as they move through the sales cycle as well as how and where content collaborators can add value. Key story elements include: •  Empathy with the customer •  A solution to the customer’s problem •  Examples in action •  3rd party credibility from influencers •  A clear path to next steps

Success Principle #1

Story Planning

“To successfully approach co-creation, you must have a plan in place before and know what your goals are. Ask yourself and your team: what does success look like after your plan is fully in effect? ”

JASON MILLER Senior Manager, Global

Content Marketing, LinkedIn

Success Principle #2

Activate Content Participants With content marketing planning in place, the identification, qualification and recruitment, aka, “activation” of influencers and content creation participants is essential. The time to begin content contributor activation is long before your campaign needs them. Social search tools like BuzzSumo, and Followerwonk can help research participant candidates by topic. Who should participate with your content creation? Potential content contributors include: •  Industry influencers •  Community members •  External subject matter experts •  Customers •  Employees Participants can be qualified by the relevance and quality of content they create, social reach and engagement. Activation occurs through outreach to individuals inviting their participation. Emphasize what’s in it for the contributor with outreach. A “give to get” approach will result in many more “yes” responses and more active promotion since the personal benefit for participation will be clear.

Consumers between the ages of 25 and 54 are the biggest content drivers,

contributing

70%

of all user generated content (UGC).

Source: SparkReel

•  Video Interviews •  Written Interviews •  Contests •  Surveys •  Blog Posts •  eBooks •  Webinars •  Email Campaigns •  Social Content

•  Expert Resources •  Testimonials •  Case Studies •  Newsletters •  Infographics •  In-Person Events •  Virtual Conferences •  White Papers •  Guides

There are many opportunities with content marketing programs to include contributors outside of marketing. When and where to add co-created content to your marketing mix depends on the information needs of your customers, resources available to manage content creation and the message you’re trying to convey. Content types for co-creation include:

“Any  content  created  for  marke0ng  can  be    co-­‐created.”  

“Companies should offer easy ways for their community to create content. It shouldn't be over-engineered or hard for their community to create.”

JUSTIN LEVY Director, Social Marketing

Citrix

Success Principle #3

Co-Create Content

Success Principle #4

Amplify Content SEO and Social Media have long been effective for driving traffic to web content and participation marketing content is no different. By adding passionate and influential contributors to content marketing programs, you can inspire greater distribution and promotion of content with the incentive of self promotion. When multiple influencers are involved in co-creating content, there can be a multiplier effect for social shares. When contributions to participation marketing projects are guided by search keywords and social topics, optimization for search engine visibility and encouraged social sharing is essentially built-in. Influencer participation in content can be particularly beneficial when it comes to pitching co-created content to blogs and industry media.

“Great  content  isn’t  great  unless  people  can  find,  consume  and  engage  with  it.”  

67% of marketers say content promotion is the primary benefit from working with

influencers.

Source: State of Influencer Engagement in 2015, Augure

Success Principle #5

Performance Optimization Keep co-created content accountable to Attract, Engage and Convert performance goals by monitoring KPIs and optimizing for improved performance. Metrics to follow include: “According to Nielsen,

content produced by experts is the ONLY type of content that has been proven to exhibit a strong lift in all areas of the purchase cycle.”

CELIA BROWN Senior Director of Content

Marketing, SAP

In addition to content measurement and optimization, ensure contributor performance meets expectations by monitoring: •  Content quality  •  Performance of content by contributor •  Contributor shares of co-created content •  Contributor network impact from shares

Reach Search Visibility Social Media Visibility Views & Impressions Traffic by Source Traffic by Segment Content Distribution Media Placements Blog Mentions Brand + Affinity Brand Sentiment

Content Consumption Page Views Click Through Rate Social Network Size Social Interactions Content Interactions Comments, Shares Time on Site, Content Paths Through Site

Form Data Captured Newsletter Subscriptions Demo & Trial Requests Contact Us Orders •  Volume •  Frequency •  Length of Sales Cycle •  Revenue Per Order

When it comes to inspiring community participation, TopRank Marketing walks the talk and we recently

engaged marketers to contribute their questions about adding participation to content. Here are the answers.

Community Q & A

A:

“I’m a total novice. How do I even get started with Participation Marketing?”

The first step to add more participation to your marketing is to have a well defined topic so you can research potential candidates that are already active in creating content. Connecting and collaborating with individuals who are already creating and actively sharing content aligned with your message taps capable content creators that are active. Where do you find these content participants? Look for those that are blogging, writing articles for publications, speaking at events or active on social networks: Once you’ve identified ideal candidates, be sure to keep it simple. Share what’s in it for the contributor and make it easy. Start by asking for one short tip from many contributors and the result will be a substantial content asset with little effort from any one contributor.

•  Employees •  Customers •  Partners

•  Industry Influencers •  Vendors •  Up and coming freelance writers

RICK SHINN Owner & Chief Dishwasher, Ricks Mission Coffee, LLC

JESSICA SNAVELY Director, Digital Marketing, Vivint

A:

How often should you use influencers and what technology should you use to scale?

Incorporating influencers into content marketing projects can start as simply as an occasional blog post, eBook, infographic or webinar. Collect data on the effectiveness of influencer collaboration with your content projects overall as well as the performance of individual influencers. If influencers are paid, consider those costs in your content marketing ROI calculations. The data and insight from performance analysis will inform your cadence for using influencers to reach marketing goals. Popular Influencer Marketing tools and platforms for identification, qualification, communications and analysis include:

•  Traackr •  GroupHigh •  Onalytica •  Tapinfluence •  BuzzSumo

•  Augure •  ScribbleLive appinions •  Little Bird •  Followerwonk •  Markerly

AMANDA CHANGURIS Senior Social Media Marketing Analyst, Highmark Health

A:

What medium is a good place to start? I need to deliver a quick win to get buy-in from internal leaders.

One of the quickest ways to include influencers in content is not to co-create, but to curate a list as recognition of expertise. Using a theme of interest to your customers, assemble quotes or tips from content that already exists into a blog post, infographic or SlideShare eBook. Visual content is more engaging and is shared substantially more than text alone, so quotes and tips should be illustrated with graphics. Reach out to those included to let them know you’ve recognized their expertise and use the outreach as a means to initiate a conversation about future collaboration. Few resources are needed to curate and relevant recognition has a very high rate of social shares amongst influencers. This combination can result in the quick-win performance to inspire continued participation efforts.

STEVE PECK Co-Founder, Docalytics

A:

Once you've received buy-in and content from influencers, what is the best approach to ensure they promote to their audiences?

Communicating expectations of content contributors from the start provides a framework for promotion. Let influencers know that you expect them to promote, but also give them good reason to do so. Factors that contribute to greater (or lesser) influencer content promotion include: •  Relevance to the influencers’ interests and goals •  Relevance of the topic to the influencer’s community •  The quality, creativity and usefulness of the content assets •  Personalized, pre-written social messages, images, embed codes

and suggestions on how they can use the content •  Communicating before, during and after content launch with

sharing encouragement, progress metrics and resources Providing project performance and individual feedback to participating influencers can also inspire sharing actions with the current and future collaboration. The key is to communicate expectations, emphasize the personal benefit to the influencer and to make it easy.

Your Partner in Content Marketing Success TopRank Marketing is a digital marketing agency that helps Fortune 1000 companies improve brand visibility, grow communities and increase sales online. Our team of marketing professionals are masters at planning, implementing and optimizing integrated online marketing programs for some of the top B2B and B2C brands in the world. If you would like to discuss a strategic content marketing program that’s optimized, socialized, influencer activated and co-created, then give us a call!

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