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#CSFDM 2
CONTENT STRATEGY FOR DIGITAL MARKETERS
A Six Week Guide to Creating, Promoting & Measuring Great Content
by Amanda Gallucci
“...to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and
move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in
print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are
to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they
must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that
they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They
need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that
offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines... Those
who succeed will propel the internet forward as a marketplace of ideas,
experiences, and products -- a marketplace of content.”
Bill Gates, Content Is King, 1996
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We’ve all heard the phrase “content is king,” and this certainly seems to be true.
Companies are rearranging to focus on content simply because it works. You
have to question, though, how can a strategy be a king? Aren’t kings usually
people? Here’s the major downfall of this clever “content is king” catchphrase—it
doesn’t actually put anyone in charge. And with no one in charge, frankly, nothing
can get accomplished. Your content strategy can’t just be a king in and of itself—it
needs you—a strong leader to ascend the throne. You’ll have to have a plan and
take command to execute it. You’ll need loyal followers and have to deal with the
usual royal politics.
Being king is hard work, but don’t fear. Once you understand the steps to take
and who to involve along the way, you can start producing content on a regal level
in no time.
You’ll learn how to:
• Assess your existing content and execute changes that increase its success
• Communicate a distinct brand message through a uniform voice and tone
• Create targeted content that engages your audience
• Manage the content strategy process and each contributing team member
• Implement cross-channel promotional strategies with long-term effects
• Set attainable goals and measure critical KPIs
Put on your thinking cap crown and let’s dive in!
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Table of ContentsWeek One: Internal & Industry Analysis 7
Part I: The Content Audit 8
Get Organized 8
What To Record 9
Defining Shareworthy And Linkworthy 11
Following Through 12
Part II: Competition Analysis 13
Who Are Your Competitors? 13
SEO Competitive Analysis 15
Social Competitive Analysis 15
Content Competitive Analysis 18
Week Two: Brand Development 20
Message, Voice & Tone 21
Core Strategy 21
Brand Promise 23
Brand Slogan 23
Voice And Tone 23
A Winning Example 24
Who Will Your Brand Be? 26
Personas 26
1. Focus On Content Audience, Not Consumer Audience 26
2. Borrow Social 28
3. Segment Everything 28
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Style Guide 31
Week Three: Creating Properties And Assets 33
Building Blocks 34
Creating A Blog 34
Starting Up On Social 34
Post Frequency 41
Site Restructure 42
Map It Out 43
Selecting Pages 44
Week Four: Setting The Stage 46
The Holistic Content Process 47
Governance 47
Idea Generation 49
Organizing 51
Content Development 52
Quality Assurance 53
Creating an Editorial Calendar 54
Calendar Tools 54
Monthly Goals 55
Daily Goals 57
Editorial Calendar Dos and Don’ts 58
Week Five: Content Creation 63
Types Of Content 64
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Week Six: Launch, Measure, Repeat 75
Launching Content 76
Social Push 76
Email 76
Landing Page 77
Paid Media 77
Measuring Content Strategy ROI 78
Social Media 78
SEO 81
The Bottom Line 84
Week Seven: All Hail The King Of Content 87
Appendix 89Blog Managment 89
Content Creation 89
Content Managment 89
Idea Organization 90
Landing Page Creation 90
Market Research 90
Project Managment 91
SEO 91
Social Analytics 92
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INTERNAL & INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
Before you can properly rule over your domain, you need to
know the ins and outs of your own site’s content. An excellent
king familiarizes himself with the history of his territory be-
fore he creates new laws. Additionally, you’ll want a working
knowledge of the type, style, and popularity of the content
your competitors put out. How can you expect to dominate
without understanding what you’re up against?
Week One
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Part I: The Content AuditBefore you start creating any new content, you’ll first have to figure out what you
already have. There are two major reasons why you need to do this. First, you
want to find the content you created that really worked. You’ll make note of what
content significantly increased your traffic, caused a buzz on social media, or was
complimented by thought leaders or clients. You can then figure out what all of
this good content has in common so that you can produce more of it.
On the other hand, you’ll have to own up to your failures. What content completely
flopped, and why? No matter how good of an idea you originally thought it was, if
it didn’t wow your audience, similar content should not make its way into your new
content strategy.
Below are the categories that the iAcquire content team uses to categorize
content during the audit phase:
Get Organized
Prior to sifting through your content, you’ll have to decide how you want to keep
track of it. An Excel spreadsheet will probably work best for categorizing individual
pieces of content. To find a starting place—first pick a method that you’ll stick to
throughout. You can choose to go through your sitemap top to bottom, or work
at one layer of your site at a time. Just be consistent. This is also a good point
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at which you can determine how many people will be needed to complete this
undertaking. If you have thousands of pieces of content to go through, assign the
areas of the site for which each person will be responsible.
Additionally, as you’re going through
your content you’ll want to make
note of site structure—where does
all this content live? Here your Excel
spreadsheet might not be enough. You’ll
need a visual record of your site layout
so that you can clearly see the click
through path people need to use to get to your content. There are a few different
flow chart creation sites you can use to map out your content, including bubbl.us and Gliffy.
Start with your home page at the top center and then work your way through the
different levels of your website. Follow your internal linking structure to map out
page depth and note what content users come across as they navigate through
the site.
After you’ve used your layout to see how your site is set up for people to use it,
check it against Google Analytics to see how people are actually getting to your
content. Hopefully you have a logical flow to your site design and people are
clicking through accordingly. If you see a big difference between the visual you’ve
drawn up and the Visitors Flow report in Google Analytics, you may be able to
pinpoint a problem. As you’re going through your site, jot some notes down about
how you can rearrange your content so that your best work is the most easily
accessible.
What To Record
First, make sure you have the basics, including page title, type of content, and
format. While manually going through the site is the best way to make important
discoveries, gathering these simpler criterions can be automated using a tool.
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Then, you’ll have a solid base to add onto.
ScreamingFrog works great for an in-depth look at your metrics, including
categories such as content type, H1 tags, HTTPS status and more. During this list
compilation, you’ll hopefully start to notice if you have an excessive amount of one
type of content and almost none of another. You should also start thinking about
which content can be reformatted and reused. Do you have an article that would
make a great infographic? Or can you expand and make it a white paper?
Making your own spreadsheet allows you to get as detailed as you want, as you
can choose how important it is to track details like author, date created, and
word count. If you’re looking for more guidance and simplicity, however, there
are also several sites that offer spreadsheet templates with what you may need.
This template from Demand Metric is great because it allows you to organize by
priority level and status.
Next record analytics and social metrics. Use a tool like Open Site Explorer or
an Excel plugin such as MozScape to find what URLs your pages are linked to.
Then, use Social Crawlytics for a social numbers count. Social Crawlytics breaks
share count down by several categories including per network, on a page level,
and by content type – all of which should be included in your audit.
As you go through your audit, you may notice patterns of different types of content
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performing better on different social networks. If long form content strikes up a
discussion on Google Plus but never gets any traction on LinkedIn, for example,
that should set off a red flag.
You may even find some networks are underperforming with all types of content.
Later when we talk about social and measuring social metrics more in depth, we’ll
think about whether you need to create different content for these networks or
whether certain platforms may not fit into your overall strategy.
Defining Shareworthy And Linkworthy
Content that gets shared on social media doesn’t necessarily get linked to and
vice versa, so it’s important to note the distinction and explore the reasons for
both. Sometimes shareworthy pieces are hot-button issues that resonate at the
time, but are not worth linking to because they do not serve as a more permanent
resource that can be applicable again in the future.
Once you have your exact link and social share counts, you also want to approach
these areas subjectively. Look at your content – would you link back to it or share
it on one of your social media accounts? Record a yes or no answer for each.
Finally, compare your opinion of what was linkworthy and shareworthy with the
data about what actually got links and shares. Juxtaposing your perception and
reality and understanding the area between what looks great on a surface level
and what actually produces results makes you a better auditor and a better
strategist.
If you felt something was really great but see it didn’t take off socially or gain
many links, highlight this in your spreadsheet and come back to it later. Maybe
it needs to be re-launched in a new format or at a better time than it was at first,
or maybe you need to consult a coworker and ask for more feedback. In addition
including certain factors can increase share-worthiness, as seen in this study on
determining a formula for content success.
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Above all, look for the commonalities between the posts that your audience
shared and linked to, and see where these elements can be naturally added to
existing content.
Content Recommendations
Finally, have a suggestions column in your spreadsheet where you can
leave yourself notes about what can be improved upon for each piece of
content individually. You can further break down these suggestions into their
own categories, for instance, “to add,” “to remove,” “to edit.” Make initial
recommendations as you’re going through everything for a first time. Afterwards,
sort your information in a few different ways and see if you find anything
interesting the second time around when organizing by popularity, date, or type of
content.
Following Through
A content audit is the first step, but it should continue to play a role as you
carry out your plan. Take some time as you produce content to keep filling in
your spreadsheet. This way, you can easily keep track of whether or not you’re
hitting your goals for the types of content you want to see made and the type of
engagement you’re hoping to produce, without having to wait another long stretch
of time before you start over on a new content audit.
“Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed”
Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist, Hubspot
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In addition to measuring your progress, keep adding new metrics that are relevant
for your brand. As you periodically redefine or reevaluate your business goals,
you may need to use different metrics to define success. For instance, if the main
purpose of your content is to generate leads, page views and social shares should
not be primary indicators of great content. You can keep these in your content
audit, but also add a column where you tally how frequently that piece of content
was cited in a sales pitch, and how frequently those pitches led to customer
acquisition.
The more metrics you add and insights you draw, the more helpful your content
audit will be. Let it continue to play a role as you shape the rest of your strategy
Part II: Competition AnalysisAuditing your own content should not be your only source for setting content
standards. If you really want to become king of your content strategy, you first
have to assess your competitors’ content. Setting the bar high for content quality
and relevancy means first exploring the level of existing content in your space.
Who Are Your Competitors?
Before you analyze your competition, you have to find out who they are. Don’t
assume that your biggest competitors will be larger, well-known sites because as
you know, SEO and content can be huge leverage points—boosting the smaller
companies who are doing it right and burying the larger organizations that still
haven’t figured it out. Dig through data to find your silent killer competitors.
Remember that due to the nature of online search, you may find that your organic
competitors are not always the most related businesses, but have many keywords
in common for another reason, like a similar company name. Also think about how
e-commerce sites that strictly operate online can be larger competitors for brick
and mortar companies than other physical retail stores.
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There are dozens of great tools, some of which I’ve outlined below, that will help
you determine with whom you’re competing, however a simple Google search can
be the best place to start. If you’re logged into Gmail, don’t forget to hide personal
results before you search.
Type in some of your most important keywords and make note of what other
companies come up. Be sure to notice things like which companies are listed
under paid versus organic search, what keywords competitors are using in their
meta titles, and which companies are utilizing Google Authorship. Google’s
‘Related:’ search function can provide additional competitors to research. Don’t
forget to finish off with a search for your own company, looking to see if any
competitor has bought an ad for your term or has managed to show up in your
search some other way.
Another great starting point is SEMRush because it identifies your competitors
in both organic and paid search. Select a competitor and export the common
keywords into Excel. Then create formulas to easily determine who is performing
better in search position, search volume and number of top ranking keywords.
The competitors who seem to be significantly ahead of you in one or all of these
categories are the competitors who you should be putting on your list to delve into
further using the following methodologies.
If you’re still not sure you’ve found all your competitors, or want to clarify whether
or not a company is in the same exact line of business as you, check directories
such as Hoovers and LexisNexis.
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SEO Competitive Analysis
To see how your competitors compare to you in terms of SEO, industry standards
like Open Site Explorer and the Majestic SEO Comparator will serve you well.
In Open Site Explorer, you can compare your company to four competitors at once
at a Page-specific, Subdomain, and Root Domain level. Use caution when looking
at these numbers—green indicates the highest number in a category but this is
not always a good thing. If you have thousands more links but still aren’t ranking
as high as your competitor, assess the quality of your links versus the quality of
their links. Mark down any great sites from which they have inbound links that you
do not, and save them for later in your content strategy when you begin outreach.
While Majestic SEO’s tool is similar to Open Site Explorer in the information
it provides and its option to compare five companies, Majestic SEO has
conveniently already separated out links from educational and governmental
domains to help you hone in on your link quality.
Social Competitive Analysis
Once you have a pretty good idea of who your competitors are, start monitoring
their social media use. At the start, take a few minutes to actually visit their
Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Pinterest pages, or examine these platforms
through a source such as Hootsuite. Look at the types of posts they use, the
frequency of their posts, and how much of a reaction each post is getting. You
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can also use Social Crawlytics to track competitors’ social shares.
Figuring out the way they engage people best will be an awesome starting point
for how and when you will build social into your content plan. Do they have unique
themed Twitter chats or exceptional Facebook contests? Move beyond just jotting
down notes of what they do and start the creative process by brainstorming how
you can incorporate similar, but better, ideas.
Find Your Audience
Followerwonk can be useful in multiple ways so take full advantage of all it has to
offer. First, search Twitter bios with some of your industry keywords to see what
companies pop up; you may further add to your competitor list this way.
Then, using the Twitter handles you’ve found for your competitors, go to the
“Compare Users” tab and compare yourself and up to two competitors at a time
based on followers to see how many followers you each have, your influence on
those followers, and the percentage of followers you have in common. Click into
the list of their followers and try to determine who their audience is and how you
can get a share of that audience. Next drilldown into the “Compare users they
follow” report and consider following some key influencers who they follow that
you do not.
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While you have Followerwonk open, you can also search users’ Twitter bios for
keywords related to your industry. You can find new influencers to follow who you
know are interested in the type of content you have to offer and therefore will be
more likely to engage with your brand. Relationships with these users can help
spread your voice to the existing communities within your area of expertise.
Additionally, you’ll need insight into what people are saying about your competitor.
Tools like Topsy and Social Mention can give you an idea of the social buzz they
are stirring and what type of feelings your industry’s audience has toward the
company.
Topsy also provides value in that they allow access to their API. Using this
involves more technical ability, but the potential is tremendous.
The Topsy API provides access to a full index of all tweets and related analysis
dated back to July 2010. With this information you’ll have the power to track
historical influencers and patterns. Moreover, you can build your own apps so that
you can track tweets in the most relevant way for your brand.
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Content Competitive Analysis
Much of what you need to do here will be a shortened version of the content audit
you performed for your own website. You can use the same exact tools on your
competitor’s sites, but just need to approach them at a slightly different angle
than your own. For instance, you likely will not be trying to analyze every single
piece of content on their site as you did with yours (unless you have one strong
competitor who outranks you everywhere and whose site you really want to dive
into).
Try to assess a representative sample by looking in depth at every fifth or so
piece of content, until you feel that you have seen at least a few examples of
each type of content they produce (article, video, infographic etc.). You should
be looking for the same social metrics, visual appeal, relevance, and all other
factors on which you were assessing your own content, but this time organize
your information in a way that directly compares your site to theirs. What do they
have that you don’t? If they have similar content, what about theirs caused it to be
received better or worse than your own?
For a faster, higher-level overview, utilize Google Brand Impressions. You can
look at a company’s most popular content (by topic or visual) over a selected date
range of up to three years, as well as see social traffic for the brand. There is also
an impact map and the option to compare two companies at once.
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When you come across posts that have performed extraordinarily well, challenge
yourself to make your own–but better—version on the same topic. Follow the
principles of Brian Dean’s so-called skyscraper technique in which you build up
your post to be more in-depth, more up-to-date, and better designed. If one post
is already doing well and you have added quite a bit of value by expanding and
refreshing it, your content will undoubtedly succeed if you can get it in front of the
right audience.
Whether you start with SEO, social or content is up to your personal preference.
As long as you are assessing each competitor from every angle, you will be well
equipped to create an even more successful content strategy!
By the end of Week One you should have:
• Performed a content audit
• Compiled a list of content recommendations
• Analyzed your competitors’ SEO, Social Networks, and Content
Coming up next in week two, we’ll be talking about how to develop your brand.
Remember, we’re not analyzing the competitors in your space so that you can
model your brand off of their success. We want to know what others are doing so
that we can set your brand apart in a positive way. Your brand’s voice and value
propositions should be completely unique.
Take one more look at your content audit before you head into week two and ask
yourself if your site has a distinct voice and clear message. If the answer is ‘no,’
let’s get to work on defining those. If ‘yes,’ remember that in order to maintain this
brand, you’ll want to make sure that there are clear guidelines in place as you
move ahead to create new content.
Get started on building your content’s foundation just ahead.
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BRAND DEVELOPMENT
Moving into the second week of your reign, you want to define
and develop your brand. This encompasses not only deter-
mining your brand personality, but also who makes up your
audience so that you can target your content accordingly.
Week Two
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Message, Voice & ToneNow that you’ve learned to perform a content audit and analyze your competition,
you’re ready to get working on what will serve as the face of your content strategy.
Before you start planning any actual content, you’ll need an exact idea of the
message you want to convey, and the voice and tone which will convey it.
Without this step, your brand identity will be unclear. Be consistent so that
no matter what piece of content a potential customer lands on, your brand is
represented appropriately. Think of every page of your site as a landing page, and
therefore a potential first impression. For this reason each page should adhere to
your brand’s larger objectives.
Figuring out message, voice and tone is too important to be a one-person job.
This requires some deep thinking on the part of all your company’s key players
since it has to encompass each person’s role and serve as a foundation for each
client-facing communication. Once you have a representative team together,
start by breaking down your message into three key areas: core strategy, brand
promise, and brand slogan.
Core Strategy
Your core strategy is your high-level overview of what you want to achieve and
how you will achieve it. A company’s mission statement is the first half of this
strategy because it details what the brand charges itself with accomplishing.
Some brands like Nike have fairly broad and large goals:
“Authenticity, honesty, and personal voice underlie much of
what’s successful on the web”
Rick Levine, The Cluetrain Manifesto
“Our mission: To bring inspiration and innovation to every
athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
Nike
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This might seem outlandish, but if you aim high, you will set yourself up to make
a plan to achieve a higher level of greatness. You might not want to set the
unrealistic expectation of inspiring every human being as Nike does, but wanting
to be the industry leader in a specific niche would not be a bad place to start.
Then when you are creating the rest of your content plan, you will include every
element necessary to get ahead of the competition.
Content’s Relationship With Core Strategy
It’s important to note here that core strategy for the business as a whole is likely
determined by a larger group that includes executives and key decision makers
from other departments. If this is the case, those working on content must learn
to redefine/enhance the brand’s voice and tone in a way that aligns with the
company’s established message.
At the very least, the brand should have core values established, and the content
team can build up a strategy that meets business goals with these values in mind.
These values should define the company’s attitude in regards to the treatment
of customers and employees, and product and service quality. It would include
positions on environment, politics, and finances, as appropriate.
In his presentation, Sine Qua Non: Core Values and Content Strategy, Jonathon
Colman, a content strategist at Facebook, proposes that organizations shouldn’t
look to create core values, but discover them. He asks the difficult questions that
will help you determine where your brand stands on critical issues, such as “If
this value became a competitive disadvantage would you keep it anyway?” This
resource is a great place to start with young brands that have not yet defined their
core values, and can also be a way to revisit the values that have already been
set for older brands.
Colman proposes, “Without core values, there is no content strategy… there’s
only content.” With this in mind, make sure that no matter how much or little the
content team is involved in creating the company’s core strategy, the content
strategy should be an extension of how this strategy will be communicated and
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integrated into the rest of the site’s messaging and marketing.
Brand Promise
A brand promise is less about your needs (what you want to achieve and how
you will do so) and more about what you have to offer. The purpose should be to
clearly define your value propositions. Why should a user choose your brand over
another? What does your service/product have that no other brand has, and how
do these features meet the wants and needs of the consumer?
In addition to describing your product/service, draw heavily on your core values
here. Don’t forget that less tangible promises to stay transparent or ethical
can also provide great value to your customers. For example, Nike promises
to maintain a high level of corporate responsibility and regularly works toward
helping adolescents and the environment.
Brand Slogan
The brand slogan is unique from the core strategy and promise. Its main purpose
is to provide a short, catchy phrase by which your brand can be remembered,
while at the same time representing something important and inherent to your
brand. Nike has one of the most famous slogans of all time, “Just Do It.”
Again, unless building a brand from scratch, the content strategy team is likely not
creating the slogan but building content around it. They should use the slogan as
a basis for setting or continuing to shape the voice and tone of the brand.
Voice And Tone
In order to convey your message most effectively, you’ll next have to decide the
personality and attitude with which you’ll portray it. The best way to determine this
is to think of your brand as a person. What type of person would your company
be? A superhero? A geek? Friendly, laid back, helpful? More serious and
authoritative?
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Make sure when you are creating guidelines and examples of how your voice
and tone will sound, you also make a ‘what not to do’ section. It’s great to have
examples, but providing your team with only examples of what they should do may
not be explicitly clear enough. Try to set up your voice and tone in pairs of what is
ok and not ok. For instance, a brand can strive to be friendly yet professional or
young and fresh but not inexperienced.
Voice vs. Tone
While the two are closely related, voice and tone are not exactly the same and
should be defined separately. Voice identifies who is speaking whereas tone
connotes how and to whom that voice is speaking, and why.
Put together a document for your brand that specifies guidelines for the type of
person your brand should emulate, and then the type of language and attitude
that the brand should use when conveying ideas. After reading this document
every person who will be responsible for writing content for the brand should have
a clear idea of not only the basic everyday communication style to adhere to, but
also:
1. The company’s definitive position on key industry issues
2. The words and manner that would appropriately convey each position
For more guidance, this resource by Joel Klettke illustrates how to find your voice
and tone in more depth. The below example will also help.
A Winning Example
MailChimp’s guide on Voice and Tone for their brand is frequently cited as a go-to
example. It’s no coincidence that they have an entire domain dedicated to it: http://
voiceandtone.com/. One of the great strengths of this guide is that it provides
specific examples of different content types, including social interactions on
Facebook and Twitter, press releases, and error messages. Then for each type of
content they provide a scenario of what the user might be looking for and how he/
she might be feeling, how MailChimp should be responding, and tips for success
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which include dos and don’ts.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that this comprehensive guide is only one piece of
MailChimp’s strong voice. It starts with their messaging and extends through their
entire online presence. They illustrate their core strategy on several pages beyond
their “About Me,” including sections on their approach to business, their view of
user experience and even their practical jokes. Within these and other pages they
also make many specific user-centric promises such as a commitment to security.
Takeaway: the more of a personality you develop, the more ways for your
audience to interact with you and build loyalty towards you.
So does having a strong message, voice and tone pay off? Absolutely. From both an SEO and social standpoint, MailChimp is winning.
MailChimp ranks in the top five for “best email manager,” “best email campaigns,”
“best free email marketing,” and variations of each. What seems more interesting
from a content strategy point of view, though, is that it ranks number one for
phrases like “best email practices” and “best email subject lines.” They have put
together so many guides and blogs surrounding all there is to know about their
niche industry that they have become a top resource. They have truly embraced
content marketing by extending their core strategy far beyond their product.
The result? Thousands of dedicated
brand fans and tons of positive
sentiment floating around the Internet.
They have over 80,000 likes on
Facebook, and comments from clients
saying things like, “Loving the new
editor. Keep the good stuff coming,
MailChimp!”
Their general Twitter account has over
110,000 followers. Their resources and DesignLab at MailChimp
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product are useful and important, but the real secret to their social media success
is in their unique voice. Their followers praise them for portraying their brand as
fun and quirky. For example, their brand fans loved their “Monkey Hat for Cats”
giveaway. It’s unrelated to anything they do, but it gets their followers involved,
makes people smile, and differentiates them from the competition. This off-topic
but engaging component is not to be left out of your strategy.
The fact that MailChimp has seen so much success in a space that many people
associate with spam (email marketing) makes this even more significant. If you
find the right voice and tone, you can make your brand break out of the negative
connotations of your industry bubble.
Who Will Your Brand Be?
You are now faced with a lot of big decisions, but hopefully you can take some
inspiration from Nike and MailChimp and realize that having a little fun with your
messaging and voice can go a long way. Sure a comical brand image is not going
to work for everyone or every industry, but a boring message and voice will work
for no one. Find at least one quality that no one else in your industry is portraying
and make yourself stand out. What is it about your company that’s entirely
unique and setting you apart? Once you’ve identified this, make it a top priority to
consistently represent this characteristic in every piece of content you create from
here on out.
PersonasI know you’ve heard about personas by now. iAcquire’s Director of Market
Research Norris Rowley gave us perfect examples of Personas for Black Friday.
But stay with me, here. Creating personas specifically as part of a new content
strategy should be approached from three different angles than usual.
1. Focus On Content Audience, Not Consumer
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Audience
Oftentimes personas are used to target potential customers, but this should
not be your only goal. If you want to be king of your content strategy, you have
to think of all the people who will be coming to your website and reading your
content. This includes not just people who want to buy products, but thought
leaders in your industry, competitors, information seekers, and more. As king you
can’t focus on your loyal subjects only. With analytics data, you already know
the demographics of the people who are returning to your site. Now that you’re
making a plan for new content, you have to think outside the box about who else
you want to attract in addition. For this, you should turn to market research.
Whereas analytics gives you more information about the user you already
have, market research rounds out your audience with people who you should
be reaching out to, who have related needs and interests and who are already
involved in your space to some extent. Data from resources like Experian
Simmons will help you define the specifics of users’ actions on the web—what
they’re searching for, how, and when.
The key to drawing traffic to your site is making content that will interest people
with all different motivations for visiting, not just your direct users/customers.
Gaining the attention of thought leaders and others in your space will indirectly
lead to sales in the long run because more people will be sharing your site.
Come up with at least four categories of users you want to target, not as
customers, but as an audience to your content. Make sure you’re planning to
create content that speaks to the full spectrum of potential readers; it should be
clear enough for those who are new to your industry, but unique and intelligent
enough to wow those who know most. Separate these groups accordingly when
you’re getting ready to personify them, and realize that not every piece of content
needs to hit each target. You can plan in such a way that the breakdown of your
content’s focus corresponds to the importance of each group.
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2. Borrow Social
A large part of your content strategy will be starting your social media from
scratch or looking to make major changes and improvements. Working with
nonexistent or underdeveloped social resources won’t help you find your entire
audience, so you’ll have to turn to your competitors, using the information you
gathered during week one.
The important difference is this time around you’ll be paying closer attention not to
what other businesses are doing to engage their audience, but who it is that they
are engaging. Once you find these users, turn to market research as described
above. You’ll then find out the type of content that your audience wants to see and
the best places and ways to reach them on social.
If you don’t have access to market research, you’ll have to do a little more digging
and make the most educated guesses you can by following the activities of
specific influential users. Look for patterns in the way the people with the most
social followers act online. Do most of them have personal blogs? What kind of
articles are they sharing? What questions are they asking? The more data you
collect about these users, the better you will be able to define them as personas.
3. Segment Everything
As you’re planning out your content, you can redesign your website to house it
more appropriately. Depending on how extensive of a project you are undertaking,
your content strategy could involve new pages including a blog, or just might need
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some reorganization to become more user-friendly. When you’re ready for this
step, keep in mind the personas you’ve decided to captivate.
Audience Strategy
Part of your persona development should also include a “How to Target” section.
Decide what types of content will best reach each and mark them down on a
checklist. If you know an unfamiliar user won’t understand a white paper that’s
fine—keep your basics on Facebook or in a brief blog post where you’ll reach this
persona, and put your heavy information in the white paper for the persona who
would be interested in more detailed information.
In addition to the medium of the
content, think about type and theme.
What will an information seeker be
looking for on your site? Consider
making a glossary of terms. Thought
leaders want actionable tips; make
sure these are in your blog. Have a
good mix of long and short form, list
style posts, and a range of topics that
cover all the different areas where you
can provide value and insight. The right balance for your brand is not a magic
formula but a careful calculation of what your audience is reading and who in your
audience deserves the most attention according to your goals, whether those are
driving leads, creating brand awareness, or something else.
“ The key in content marketing is in understanding what
consumers really truly want/need and in providing it to them
in the method, time and place of their choice. You can’t only be
good at one or the other – you have to nail both.”
Julie Fleischer, Director of Content Strategy & Integration, Kraft Foods
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Layout
Finally, segment the layout of your website according to the people who will be
using it. Right on your homepage, direct different groups of people to different
places—the places that are relevant to them specifically. For example, Citibank
not only segments their content into categories at the top of the homepage in their
menu; they also have a dropdown so that you can click through to the part of the
site you need.
Depending on your business model, it may make sense to have entirely different
microsites for each type of user. For smaller sites, all you’ll need is helpful
navigation getting people to specific sections of the site or specific blog posts that
are relevant to their needs.
Creating personas within a content strategy doesn’t have to be a radically new
process from what you’ve done before, but if you keep these key focal points
in mind you should find that your audience is much larger than you thought
originally. Once you find it, you’ll be prepared to hone in on smaller specific
groups and make content just for them. Depending on your business model,
it may make sense to have entirely different microsites for each type of user.
For smaller sites, all you’ll need is helpful navigation getting people to specific
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sections of the site or specific blog posts that are relevant to their needs.
Creating personas within a content strategy doesn’t have to be a radically new
process from what you’ve done before, but if you keep these key focal points
in mind you should find that your audience is much larger than you thought
originally. Once you find it, you’ll be prepared to hone in on smaller, specific
groups and make content just for them.
Style GuideAll the elements we’ve covered are critically important, and as such should be
brought together in a document that can be shared with everyone who plays a
role in content strategy for your brand. The only way to make sure strategists are
planning for the right personas and writers are using the same voice and tone is
to give them a detailed outline of what you’ve established alongside examples that
will further flesh out how you want your brand to be presented and how you do not
want your brand to be presented.
Even if you believe your team has a thorough understanding of your brand’s style,
don’t forget that it’s likely you’ll be bringing in outside writers and designers for
guest blog posts or as freelance creators. In Joel Klettke’s guide to working with
copywriters, he details exactly why you need to have a style guide to hand off to
anyone who will be writing for you.
In addition to outlining what we’ve covered in this chapter, your style guide should
also detail layout and format requirements.
Establish standards for
• Length of posts
• Fonts
• Headers
• Introductions
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• Calls to Action
• Citations
• Images
• How will you give credit to copyrighted images?
• What types of images are ok to use?
• Are there size requirements or restrictions?
• What needs to be done for images that get pulled into social meta
tags or other places on your site?
Your style guide can be altered later if you find you need to shift your target
audience or some of your goals, but you should always have something to strive
towards and measure against.
By the end of Week Two you should have:
• Crafted a core strategy, brand promise, and mission that your brand can get behind for the long run
• Defined your brand’s personality and it’s attitude towards your audience
• Fleshed out personas from market research and analytics
• Compiled a style guide that illustrates your voice and tone, personas, and editorial standards
With a strong grasp on your brand’s style and target audience, you’re ready
to start expanding your reach. In week three you’ll learn to build out any new
sections of your site and put the finishing touches on them so your site is ready
to be shared and promoted via your fresh content. You’ll also need to create
accounts on select social networks so you can develop your audience and have
strong channels within which you’ll communicate with this audience.
Continue on to find the best ways to integrate social and new content.
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CREATING PROPERTIES AND ASSETS
Part of your new role as king will include generating a blog
and promoting your brand with social media accounts, as well
as making changes and adding features to your site. All of this
is necessary to keep your subjects engaged, share information
with them in a user-friendly way, and build a relationship. In
this case, you do not want to be the type of king who is inac-
cessible to the common people—you want to embrace the opin-
ions of those whom you serve and communicate with them
regularly.
Week Three
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Building BlocksYou’ll need to create a plan, a blog, and several social media accounts before you
begin putting anything into action. Ask yourself two questions:
1. What platforms will help me reach my audience?
2. How frequently should I post to remain relevant?
Creating A Blog
There are dozens of sites that will help you create a blog but WordPress is
standard and user-friendly. Make sure you’re branding your blog with the right
colors, images, and catchphrases that will make your company memorable and
have a distinct persona.
Wait to start populating your blog with content until you’ve laid out your content
strategy and built out your social properties, a mailing list, and other associated
assets. We’ll get into how you should create and promote your blog content in
depth in the second half of this guide.
Starting Up On Social
For social, having a presence on Facebook and Twitter is a minimum requirement.
There are endless possibilities to what you can do on these platforms and various
others, but first you need to grow your following and prove the value of interacting
with your brand.
As the most widely used platform around the globe, Facebook is a non-
negotiable. You can engage quickly and easily by posting photos, videos and
statuses that people ‘like.’ Beyond these basics, there are great ways to target
your audience with paid posts and ads, and serious potential to build unique apps
and integrate with apps you’re already using.
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Your posts should reflect your site’s content and your brand’s values and voice.
Above all, however, you need to use Facebook as a two-way communication
resource. Don’t post about what’s important to you – post something that strikes a
chord with your users.
If someone comments, whether positive or negative, reply! There’s nothing worse
than ignoring people or deleting their comments when they have problems or
complaints – doing so almost always ends in an influx of more angry supporters
with a similar opinion. Show your users that you care about their feelings and are
able to support your position on something or alter it as necessary.
Twitter similarly should reflect your voice and be seen as an opportunity to
interact and engage with your followers, but its 140 character limit makes it
inherently different from Facebook. People look to Twitter for quick updates,
so here it’s appropriate to share curated content that is not your own, but has
relevance to your audience. You can share industry news, case studies, or blogs
that people in your space will find valuable.
When you first join, be aware of your follower/following ratio. You certainly want
to follow influencers in your space and news/media outlets relevant to your brand,
but you don’t want to follow hundreds of people right away. Your strategy can
grow to include following brand fans, customers, and additional influencers as
you progress and naturally grow followers over time. You should also consider
following employees as a way of measuring internal engagement with the brand
and for reputation management purposes.
Tweets should be optimized by using one or two relevant hashtags when
appropriate (not every single tweet). Look for the hashtags that are used all the
time in your industry and monitor the conversations that take place there so you
know how to join in. When you’ve mastered this, start creating your own hashtags
for your brand, certain campaigns, or even branded Twitter chats or contests.
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Use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to monitor your brand mentions and
relevant hashtags. When you see your company in a tweet, be responsive.
Thank people for sharing your content, reinforce positive feedback, and address
concerns that are brought up. Don’t be afraid to hit the retweet button when
someone says something particularly great about your brand or if another brand
or media resource shares a piece of exceptional content.
Keep in mind that with more than any other platform, it’s not necessary for every
tweet to contain a picture, link, or video. You can tweet a quick tip, an inspirational
quote, a joke… whatever is relevant for your brand. The relevant caveat is huge…
don’t just tweet something funny/political/newsworthy to be fishing for retweets;
this frequently backfires.
Google Plus
While Google Plus isn’t an ideal platform for everyone across the board and some
groups of people are more active than others on this network, there are certainly
ways to make use of it. On the most basic level, Google Plus can boost search
engine rankings for brands who use the proper keywords in their page description
and Google Authorship for their blog posts.
Google+ Local is also important for service oriented businesses to optimize
because it’s where users can post and read reviews, see pictures, and find out
contact information.
Posts on Google Plus can be similar in nature to Facebook, but because different
people tend to favor different social networks, you may find you are interacting
with a separate group of influencers. Hence, you’ll want to make sure you are
targeting the audience that exists on that specific platform.
Another unique element of Google Plus is their Communities section. You can
join different groups that are targeted towards people with specific skills, hobbies,
and interests. If you interact with people in communities related to your business,
you can grow relationships that carry over onto your own Google+ profile (so long
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as you are genuinely interacting and not merely posting links to your content).
Finally, if you choose to grow a following on your G+ page, you can opt to make
use of Google Hangouts. By video chatting with your audience, you can get as
creative as you want, from hosting Q&A sessions to teaching lessons to holding
contests. There’s no more personal way to interact on social media.
When LinkedIn purchased and integrated with the Pulse mobile reader
application, it became clear how much they want their platform to center more
around content. They suggest content to users via the site, mobile application, and
email based on the users’ preferences, influencers they follow and groups they’re
in. While I don’t personally know many people who currently flock to LinkedIn for
content, there is tremendous potential there and I wouldn’t be surprised if content
skyrocketed on the platform in the near future.
As far as strategy, again it comes back to your audience. LinkedIn is primarily
for professionals, and so content focused on career strategy, job skills, and
networking are the obvious choices. You know your target and your industry best,
however, and you should tailor just how professional and formal your content
should be based on how that will be received.
LinkedIn may be a seemingly more “boring” platform because it certainly isn’t the
place to host contests or post funny pictures, but tapping into a wide network of
professionals can lift your business to new heights so this platform should not
be ignored. You can’t recruit strong talent without LinkedIn, and you likely won’t
get the same level of respect from prospective clients and leaders in your space
without having a presence there.
A basic plan should be quality over quantity. Every blog post you write may not
be the most relevant material for your LinkedIn, meaning daily updates could
be unnecessary, but making sure to post relevant white papers, conference
presentations, and content that appeals to a more corporate audience should be a
regular priority.
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If your business is visually oriented, there’s no excuse for not having a Pinterest
account. While the site continues to have a stronger female demographic and is
known for posts relating to fashion, exercise, crafts, and food, it’s possible to find
success on Pinterest in other verticals that involve high quality original images and
videos. To determine whether or not Pinterest is the right fit, explore the different
categories (as seen below) and see if you have enough relevant, distinctive
content to post.
As you’re getting started, create a manageable number of boards by determining
the appropriate level of specificity for the categories you want to contribute to. For
instance, if you’re a restaurant, having
a “Food & Drink” board is too broad,
but creating dozens of boards that only
encompass one dish or ingredient isn’t
optimal either. Maybe categories like
Breakfast, Lunch, Appetizers, Entrees
and so on would be most appropriate
for the range of your menu and the
frequency at which you plan to pin. Don’t create so many boards that most will
look empty or too few boards that seem cluttered with only semi-related pictures
and videos.
For each pin you create, make sure to fill out the description box with enough
detail for those who choose to repin without changing the description on their
own. You may also want to consider including some text or branding on the image
itself in the event that people delete the text in the description box when they repin
it.
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While Instagram may be the most personal social medium and not as many
companies are utilizing it, there are brands who are capitalizing on the advantages
it has to offer. Two excellent examples are Pretzel Crisps, who post unique recipes
replacing typical ingredients with their pretzels, and Tieks, who arrange their
shoes in visually stunning ways. Both of these brands are also exceptional in the
way they play off of seasonal events.
Instagram should by no means be a replacement for Pinterest because there is
no organization like Pinterest’s boards and you wouldn’t regularly want to post on
Instagram more than a few times per week. Instead of the same pictures you have
elsewhere on your site and other social networks, you can use Instagram as a
chance to show the face behind your brand as employees can take pictures from
their smartphones and give sneak peeks at company happenings.
When you think outside the box, there are many ways brands can creatively show
off their product or service in daily snapshots or 15 second videos. If you integrate
with Facebook, use appropriate hashtags (3+ per post is typical for Instagram),
post unique content, and respond to comments, you are sure to develop a
following. You can then host contests and giveaways on Instagram, such as
entering to win a prize pack by liking and commenting on a picture.
Niche Social Networks
There are hundreds of other social networks out there that focus on certain
#CSFDM 40
communities. Some are populated with engaged, loyal followers bonding over
whatever it is they have in common. So, these relatively smaller sites could still
be a better use of your resources than a major network on which your audience
is not particularly active. Examples include Houzz for home remodeling ideas,
Foodspotting for foodies, and Stylitics for fashionistas.
To find success in these niche platforms, let your approach be as organic as
possible; make sure you fully understand how people interact on the site. Don’t
stick out by using hashtags on a site that has no use for them, for instance. The
more you observe how users of this network want to be engaged, the more you’ll
be able to use the site or app to its fullest potential.
Focus On Value
As I touched upon earlier, not every platform is right for every brand. Don’t feel
pressure to make an account on every possible network just because that’s what
you see other brands doing. You’ll make the best use of your time and energy if
you work hard at developing your presence in the places that matter most instead
of spreading yourself too thin.
“The best way to create discovery is to plug into communities”
Katrina Craigwell, Digital Marketing Manager, General Electric
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Market research should be the first way you inform your decision about what
networks to join because you’ll want to base your answers on your target
demographic and their social media behavior. Second to this, you should think
about what makes the most sense for the format and theme of your content. For
instance, a financial company may not see much traction on Pinterest because of
the heavier content and lack of shareworthy images.
Post Frequency
Once you have everything all set up, make a general plan of how often you want
to utilize each channel. A good goal for blogging may be posting every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday to start off. On most social networks, on the other hand,
you’ll want to post daily or multiple times per day (except as noted above).
As far as what time of the day you should be publishing blog posts and promoting
them on social media, there are some basic guidelines you can follow, but the
more important focus should always be on your audience. Track hourly visits in
Google Analytics to see what time you have the most people coming to your blog
and track mentions of your brand on social media with a tool like Social Mention
to see when users are talking about your content. Tagging all the links you share
on bit.ly will also help you determine when people are clicking on and sharing
your links.
Your starting point before you can track data for your own brand should definitely
be market research that spans across your industry. Find out how frequently your
competitors are posting new content and determine when the thought leaders in
your space are interacting online. You can also consider these factors:
• Time zone of your target audience: if you have international customers, don’t let your social media go dark during their peak hours
• Time of day people read content: Most people consume new content before they get to work or during a lull in their mornings, not in the rush of afternoon meetings or finishing up work for the day
• Type and length of content: Shorter, lighter pieces might actually work
#CSFDM 42
better during lunchtime or later. Longer thought-provoking pieces should be sent out in the morning so people have time to digest them.
There are various studies that attempt to uncover the best days of the week
and times of day but due to multiple conflicts in the various reports I’ve seen,
I’m skeptical to say there really is a universal posting schedule. If you want to
learn more about how iAcquire’s Manager of Market Research and Analytics has
determined our posting schedule, you can read more here: Tick, Tock, Time To
Post That Doc.
Site RestructureAs you’re taking the time to build a blog and add social platforms, you should be
rearranging your site to highlight all your new offerings. Make sure your site is
clearly organized and easy to navigate, and add a social component to as much
as possible: icons of where to follow you on every page, and share buttons on
content that should be shared.
Now is also the time to edit the content in existing pages, and consider if you can
better meet user needs by adding new pages. Does your “About Us” page really
explain who you are and the direction you want to move in with your new content?
Maybe linking “About Us” to new “Meet Our Team” and “Our Brand Mission”
pages will further clarify. Look at everything the “About Progressive” page links to
for example:
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Create fresh pages of content anywhere it will enhance the usability of your
site. Be cautious of creating so many new pages that you have added needless
information or have hidden what is most important to your audience.
Map It Out
Use the same tool that you used to visualize your site layout in Week One. If you
already have a solid structure, you can simply add on. If your page structure is too
deep or if you have too many unorganized pages, move around and condense
where you can.
“It’s a fact: People won’t use your web site if they can’t find
their way around it.”
Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think
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This diagram should let your developer know how each page connects to other
pages on the site, and it should also make clear where content needs to be added
and taken away.
Selecting Pages
It will take some discretion to determine how much content you want to share
about your brand and how many pages it will take to do so. A brand new company
probably doesn’t need a “history” page yet, and a company of thousands should
not be building out a biography page for each and every team member.
To decide what’s most appropriate, think first of who will be coming to your
site and what their needs are. Pair this with how you measure success and
conversions. For example, maybe one of your goals is to get signups for product
demos. What type of information are people searching for on your site before
they typically sign up for a demonstration? Is it worth it to have an FAQ page
answering the most common questions you get from prospects, or better yet
are there major features of your product that would be useful explaining or even
walking people through in a video? Providing more background information can
save time for you and your potential users.
By the end of Week Three you should have:
• Set up a blog and social accounts on all relevant networks
• Determined an appropriate posting schedule for your social media channels
• Planned any necessary structural changes to your site’s layout
Whether you’re building out social media accounts or pages on your site, be ever
aware of your voice and tone. Stick to the guidelines that you laid out for your
brand last week and always have an editor-in-chief or lead content strategist
checking for brand cohesion across your online presence. Then you’ll be ready to
solidify your foundation in week four, where you’ll set up a workflow and the tools
you need to maintain an efficient content process.
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Congratulations on getting half way through your content strategy ramp up! Don’t
stop now; get ready to put some important processes in place so you can keep up
the good work.
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SETTING THE STAGE
As you’re laying the framework for your strategy, you’ll have
to decree your royal guidelines as to how the process will be
carried out. Carefully include enough structure to maintain
organization and use your time and resources effectively,
while at the same time allowing room for creative freedom so
that you don’t stifle ideas that will lead to outstanding content.
Week Four
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The Holistic Content ProcessContent strategy involves the right balance of creativity and structure. If you write
content with no strategy behind it, it can fall flat because it’s not targeted to the
right audience or promoted correctly. On the other hand, if the process is too
rigid and extensive, you fall into the trap of writing content for search engines and
robots instead of content that connects with and inspires your audience.
The tools below will help you move through your strategy in an organized manner
that allows you to view the big picture of how content strategy fits into your overall
marketing plan and business initiatives, and help you unite your content in voice,
tone, and theme. They’ll also leave enough flexibility to adapt to and grow with
your users.
Governance
While we’ve been talking about the importance of being king and ensuring that
one person needs to take charge and maintain control, you’ll still need to work
with a team to accomplish your content goals. Through each step of the process
you need to maintain open communication with your team internally, as well as be
connected with any external factors that may push you to reshape your content.
Due to the nature of content being a holistic, collaborative process, a hierarchy
must be set up carefully as to not be restrictive. For a smaller team there will
certainly be a shorter chain of command and approval process as to not add
unnecessary steps and limit creative freedom. At the same time, in organizations
both large and small, each person involved in content must know who has the
final say in what gets produced and published.
“Quality, relevant content can’t be spotted by an algorithm.
You can’t subscribe to it. You need people - actual human
beings - to create or curate it.”
Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web
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There should be one person fully responsible for all edits, whether that person is
called an editor-in-chief or whether the manager/director of content strategy has
the final say in all content. This person has to adhere to the guidelines set by his/
her supervisor, maybe a director of marketing who reports to the CEO directly, so
that all the content continues to align with the brand as a whole.
Below the content strategists, the pyramid structure is less clear. Under
the guidance of strategists, content writers should be working with market
researchers, graphic designers, developers, and editors in a circular revision
process until they reach a final product.
Starting to sound too complicated for a smaller team? No matter who you assign
to what parts of the process, keep these steps in mind:
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Now let’s move into some of the ways we can keep this process flowing smoothly.
Idea Generation
First, have a team meeting with everyone involved to go over your editorial
calendar (more on how to manage an editorial calendar soon). While you’re still in
the planning process, allow each person to share his or her ideas freely.
If you get stuck during the brainstorming process, there are various sources you
can turn to for idea generation—you just need to get creative.
Social Search
First, find out what people are already talking about. Use a real-time social search
engine like Social Mention to look for a topic everyone is buzzing about and see
what you can add to the conversation. If you have actionable tips to help or a
contrasting perspective, use that as the starting point for your content.
A word of caution: sometimes a hot topic already going viral on social media
and in the news is better to stay away from because it is being overdone. Don’t
write another article on a topic you’ve seen everywhere unless you truly have an
original spin to put on it.
News Aggregators
Check out the posts around the web that people are sharing and upvoting on
HackerNews and related niche sites, like Inbound.org for the inbound marketing
community.
Again, approach cautiously as you want to add to trending articles, not repeat
them.
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Q&A Networks
To find fresh ideas, browse Quora
for popular questions in your area of
expertise. If people are searching for
answers there, it is most likely because
they cannot locate an existing blog
post answering their question to their
liking—that’s where you come in.
Additionally, consider looking through forums specifically related to your role or
business, such as Stack Overflow for developers.
Some of your best content can emerge in response to these queries if you set
out to create resources that people can link to, bookmark, and return to regularly.
Where possible, strive to make these resources evergreen content, meaning they
contain topics and strategies that will remain relevant over a long period time and
are not centered around current events or pop culture.
Test Ideas
Entering a thread on Reddit allows you to get feedback in real time from actual
people. Start a discussion, ask a question, propose a solution for a common
problem, and sit back and watch how people react. Engage and ask further
questions and see what works best.
In a guest post on the iAcquire blog, Yuriy Yarovoy, SEO Manager at Razorfish,
remarks Reddit is a great place to test ideas because “Redditors are painfully
honest.”
Market Research
A final route is to capitalize on new research that no one is talking about yet. Pew
Internet is a great resource for research and statistics in every category from
politics to gaming. MarketingCharts similarly provides a wide range of data as it
#CSFDM 51
pulls information from a variety of sources. See what you can take away from the
facts you find and determine an interesting, relevant way to present them.
The same sources you turned to when making personas like Nielsen and
Experian can work just as well.
As iAcquire’s Manager of Content Strategy Devin Asaro explains in Are Feelings
Good for Content Strategy?, such data can help you build a stronger content
strategy by first diving into what people actually like, want, and need, versus
formulating an idea you’re in love with and then desperately trying to find an
audience for it.
Organizing
Getting all these ideas down in one place and making sure they get carried out
can quickly become a problem if you aren’t using the right tools to stay organized.
Brainstorming
During your meeting, record ideas by category or theme so that you can keep
your messaging in sync and find related ideas more easily. You can use different
Excel tabs, or categorized notes and notebooks in Evernote or Microsoft
OneNote.
Further, you don’t want the want the collaboration to stop when you walk out
of your brainstorming session. Use a visual online creative board like Realtime
Board or Popplet to organize and share ideas among your team members. Post
what you’ve talked about in your meeting and then keep adding to the discussion
throughout the development process.
When you have this laid out in front of you, you’ll start to get a good idea of which
pieces of content are ready to head to production, which should be tabled for a
later date when they’ll be more relevant or when your team has more bandwidth,
and which might not be a fit for your brand and need to be altered or removed.
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Project Management
Once your project manager selects which ideas will move forward, he or she
should assign what each member of the team should be working on to bring the
content to life. Gathering the people who will be researching, writing, and making
the creative assets in the beginning of the process rather than trying to catch
individuals up to speed afterwards should help avoid confusion and repetition
later.
Consider using a project management tool like Trello, Asana, or Pivotal Tracker.
These apps will help in tracking due dates and will give you space to discuss each
assignment individually. This is the best way the project manager of your content
team can monitor progress and clearly lay out who is responsible for what.
Beyond having a handle on each content process, you also want to have a strong
read on how members of the team are doing. You can check in with individuals
in meetings or even ask for feedback with a 15Five report in which each person
takes fifteen minutes to answer questions that his or her manager can read in
five minutes. You have the option to ask questions like, “What’s going well in
your role?” and “What challenges are you facing? How are you going to fix and
where do you need help?” This step is by no means specific to content strategy,
but having a strong leader in place will undoubtedly help produce more effective,
strategic content – not just content that is creative and well written.
Content Development
During content development, the content creator should be governor of his or
her own work. Having an editor look at an unfinished draft can waste time as the
writers/designers may catch their own mistakes and make changes as they’re
creating. Give them some freedom, within reasonable guidelines and due dates,
to have the space to work on content before they pass it along.
This does not mean, however, that the content creator should not periodically
check virtual boards for new ideas or additional instructions. Further, setting up
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a Google Alert with keywords from your topic as you are writing/shooting video/
designing etc., is smart because you want to make sure there is not new content
coming out that will throw the content you are creating into question.
Collaboration
There are a few tools that focus specifically on content planning and collaborating,
such as GatherContent and Editorially. These are a step above Google Docs
as they have advanced commenting features and the ability to save drafts and
revisions in different forms.
WordPress Plugins
If you are blogging on a WordPress platform, there are several plugins that can
help you as you’re writing.
For example, Zemanta finds related posts and images to give you suggestions on
what you may want to cover or avoid. It shows you content to which you can link,
too.
Additionally, the Yoast plugin helps with SEO elements like meta descriptions and
canonical link elements as you work on your post.
There are hundreds of other plugins
that you may find beneficial for
organizing, editing, collaborating,
and more. Sort through them in the
WordPress Plugin Directory.
Quality Assurance
Once the first draft of content is
complete, governance should pass
first to the editors and lastly back to
the project manager for final approval.
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While quality assurance should never solely rely on automation, there are some
useful tools that can be used as a starting point or second opinion. Check out the
GrammarBase Chrome plugin—a free tool that checks for Grammar, Punctuation,
Style, Plagiarism, and Contextual Spelling.
Beyond checking spelling and formatting, the QA process should also involve
making sure your goals are met as far as fitting the correct target audience and
adhering to the style guidelines you set back in week two.
Creating an Editorial CalendarAlong with your workflow process you’ll need a defined schedule of posting on
your blog. Create an editorial calendar that reflects the goals of your content
strategy.
Calendar Tools
Before we dive into what you do with an editorial calendar, let’s look at some of
the tools you can use to house it.
At iAcquire we use Trello for our content calendar, similarly to the way we use
Trello to manage all of our other projects. We have a few columns to organize
posts from ideas to launch: “To Schedule,” “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.”
The positives about using Trello are that you can assign posts to specific people
with certain due dates, create checklists for multifaceted content, and house
conversations about each piece of content right on the card created for it. It might
not work for some since the format is not primarily a calendar, but now that Trello
allows users to view due dates on a calendar, this shouldn’t be as much of a
problem.
Another option comes in the form of Excel spreadsheets. There are quite a few
templates out there, and you can customize them to work for you. Two exceptional
Excel calendars are these by HubSpot and Vertical Measures. They may help you
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organize your schedule more clearly since the visual layout itself is a calendar,
but the collaboration aspect could potentially be more difficult. Even if you share
the calendar through something like Google Drive, it will be difficult to have an
uncluttered conversation about individual posts right in the document.
Finally, the platform you’re using might have plugins of its own that you can use
for your editorial calendar. Here’s one from WordPress, for example.
Monthly Goals
Setting long-term goals for your content strategy is great, but you also want to
set markers for yourself along the way so that you can track your progress more
easily and leave room for adjustment. Setting up your calendar on a month-to-
month basis should do the trick.
First, think of the kind of progress you want to see when the month is through.
Try to pick something quantitative such as a gain of a certain number of followers
on social media, as well as something qualitative like a more cohesive message
and tone. Think about how many times per month you should post on your blog in
order to accomplish these goals.
If you’re not going to post every day, how many times per week can you
realistically commit to? One to three? What days will work best? Of course you
should use data about your actual users to determine the best schedule for
your audience, but until you have a thorough understanding of your readership,
you can use data like in this study from Kissmetrics, Search Engine Land, and
HubSpot, to determine the best times to post blog content.
If there is something especially important in your niche, contemplate making
“Try to turn as many soft, aspirational goals as possible into
success criteria, and make them specific enough that you can
actually tell whether or not you’ve met them.”
Erin Kissane, The Elements of Content Strategy
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a weekly column about it. Technology Tuesday, Wardrobe Wednesday… give
yourself a broad enough theme to work with frequently and then make the posts
specific and unique enough to stand out.
At the end of the month, you’ll be able to look at which posts performed best
and on which days so that you can test adjustments to the next month’s strategy
accordingly.
Have A Cohesive Vision
Picking an end goal and x number of times to post per month and then focusing
on individual posts won’t be most conducive to fostering your brand. You want to
lay out posts in a way that they can lead into and complement each other, or at
the very least not clash with one another.
With a big picture in mind you can plan for four awesome weeks of content, not
three epic posts to start off followed by filler posts until next month. You’ll also
ensure you are rotating through all the different types of content you can. With
so many to choose from (as outlined in week five), there is no reason to have the
same type of post more than two days in a row.
Big Features
You should also consider if there is anything you want to add to your content
strategy on a strictly monthly basis. This can include an e-newsletter, a wrap-
up post of progress for the month, or a list of best content or client work from
the past month. Try to find one element that you can make your own and deliver
consistently at the start or end of each month.
You might push this even further and make it a goal to produce a major piece of
content like a white paper, case study, or webinar at the end of each month. This
may very well take more than one month of planning ahead so you’ll want to factor
this in as early as possible. You’ll also want to promote this ahead of its release,
so make sure to factor this into your calendar as well. If you’re new to creating
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content or have a smaller team, it might be a better idea to shoot for these big
features at the end of each quarter instead.
Daily Goals
Of course you want each post to have a large number of social shares and
comments, but understand that if you’re just starting out you may not find your
audience immediately. Instead your day-to-day focus should be on quality
assurance and making sure each post fits your style guidelines and is as strong
as it can possibly be.
You also want to be aware of other content floating around and outside factors
that can affect your message.
Before setting a post live, check:
1. What was posted this week in your blog and relevant related blogs?• Is this different?
• Does this top it?
• Should you reference it?
2. Is anything going on in industry or world news that makes this post more or
less appropriate? • If so, what changes can we make to reflect this?
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Editorial Calendar Dos and Don’tsUse the following guidelines to schedule your posts on an editorial calendar.
Do: Brainstorm as a team and leave room for creative
freedom
Don’t: Assign posts to different people without
guidance or structure
Planning an editorial calendar should not be a one-person job. All of the people
who will be contributing to content creation should have some level of control in
the calendar process. Come together as a group to figure out how individuals
might bring together posts around common monthly or weekly themes.
There’s no rule that all your posts for the month must be interconnected, but you
should still plan content together. Having one person pick all the topics suffocates
individual potential and creativity, whereas each person planning his/her own
content without keeping the rest of the month’s posts in mind leads to a messy
collage of thoughts instead of a place for strengthening your brand’s identity.
While you may be tempted to assign each person on the content team a due date
and leave your calendar at that, doing so sets you up for failure because it will be
much harder to prevent repetition and to vary type and format of content. Having
a rotating schedule of writers keeps consistency, but you’ll need to add more
information than names to your calendar well in advance, and shouldn’t make
these assignments before getting everyone on the same page.
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It’s far more important to vary the content on your blog than the writers
themselves, so assigning different topics and formats to different dates and then
seeing who on your team is best qualified to tackle that assignment is a stronger
method.
Do: Plan general themes for the entire year
Don’t: Plan out day-to-day posts more than three months
out
The biggest potential flaw of content calendars is that anything you plan too far in
advance will become irrelevant. However, some general themes and occasions
come and go season after season, and these can be a great baseline. Just
remember that “The Holidays” is not an acceptable theme and will not help
generate posts—you’ll need something specific to your brand and your industry.
There are plenty of non-seasonal ways you can plan your themes, too. If there
are multiple categories in your area of expertise that you plan on covering on your
blog, try focusing on one or two at a time. For instance, the iAcquire blog might
hone in on content strategy one month and the marriage of market research and
social media the next. Presenting a series on a given topic this way and letting
your readers know it will be continuing over the course of x number of weeks can
help increase your engagement level.
A third plan of attack would be centering strategy around a large piece of content
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you want to push out that month. If you know you’ll have an eBook on email
marketing coming out, for instance, you might want to expand on the different
angles in each chapter over the course of a few weeks.
After you have a creative, relevant theme for each month, don’t get too far ahead
of yourself. It is way too early to know exactly what you should create 7 months
in the future. When the time gets closer (no more than one month in advance)
you can pull timely items into your pre-made topic. As always, keep checking
for anything that could make your topic outdated as you get closer to the publish
date.
Do: Plan out both topics and types of content
Don’t: Make an overly fragmented or complicated
plan
“Don’t publish content just because you have it. Only publish
content that is relevant.”
Gerry McGovern & Rob Norton, Content Critical
We’ve already talked about why to plan ahead to avoid repetition—the same
topic explained over and over again without new insights adds no value, and the
same format gets too boring to engage and keep people coming back for more.
On the other hand, you don’t want to hinder your ability to deliver content to a
high standard and on time because you’ve spread yourself too thin or set your
expectations too high.
Remember that it’s perfectly ok to have multiple posts centered on the same
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theme, so it’s not like if you talk about social media one day, you shouldn’t
mention it again until next month. In fact, if your topic shifts drastically from one
day to the next, it may be difficult for your audience to form a strong relationship
with your brand.
If the post adds value that no other post adds, the topic is unique enough.
Similarly, content forms do not have to vary radically with each post. You don’t
need to have a video one day and an infographic immediately following. This will
be too much work for your team and too much information for your audience.
Using different formats can be as simple as having a “How To” post one day, and
a post answering user-generated questions the next.
Do: Leave flexibility for posts related to hot topics and
current events
Don’t: Newsjack inappropriately
Plan ahead for important dates and special events in your industry. Mark off
days on your calendar when you know such events are occurring and plan to
not generate the specific topic and format of the post until you find out the news
surrounding that day/event. For instance, you might schedule a post for the day
after a major conference and write about the most talked about themes or the
best tips and strategies you learned. You can have this post on the calendar but
will have to actually attend the conference to know the exact points you want to
highlight.
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Understand that there will be other times when blog worthy news erupts
unexpectedly and allow yourself the flexibility to move around previously
scheduled posts in order to talk about what is now more important. The key is
to really only comment on news that is relevant to your specific industry—don’t
try to take a hot news item that is completely unrelated in the hopes that you will
generate clicks and shares (see Newsjacking: You’re Doing it Wrong).
Everything comes down to finding a careful balance: plan content enough in
advance that you have time to execute posts to the best of your ability but not
so far in advance that your ideas become outdated. At the same time, allow for
creativity and a chance for updates without losing your cohesive message, theme,
and voice.
By the end of Week Four you should have:
• Developed a content workflow and assigned roles and realistic due dates
• Explored possible topic ideas after thorough research of what’s already out there
• Set up tools to stay organized and manage content projects
• Created an editorial calendar and begun to schedule content
Now that your team knows how the content process works, you’re ready to tackle
all of the post ideas in week five and start coming up with your own.
Grab a pen and paper and let’s brainstorm!
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CONTENT CREATION
You have a polished site, social media accounts, guidelines
and a process; you’re ready to create new content! The ideas in
this chapter are merely that—ideas. Explore them, get inspired,
make them better and add your brand’s touch. Remember,
you’re the king, so use your influence to produce something
magnanimous.
Week Five
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Types Of ContentNow that you’re ready to lead your team through the creative process, it’s time to
gather your ideas. Since you’ll want to vary the type and length of your content,
try challenging yourself to start out by not repeating the same type of post for
your first month. This way, you can have a better grasp on what works best for
your audience, where your content team’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and how
much time and effort goes into different types of pieces.
Below are 31 ideas to get you started on your month of varied content, and the
minimum time required for each. Feel free to go above and beyond; in fact, I
challenge you to do so.
1. Share Company NewsTime Required: 30 minutes
Tell your audience about what’s going on in your office—new hires, fun events,
and company culture.
2. Create a How To GuideTime Required: 1 - 4 hours
Break down parts of your strategy into easy to follow steps and include an
example and visual for each step along the way. Depending on how complicated
the subject is, your post can be more time consuming to write, but a clear guide is
invaluable.
3. Present a Case StudyTime Required: 1 week – 1 year
Whether you’re compiling research about your clients or your internal sales
process, you don’t need to keep all that great information to yourself. Let people
know what you’ve tried and what you’ve found the outcome to be. Give details
about the implementation process and the results. Present clear takeaways that
prove why your study is relevant to others.
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4. Make a List of Top PostsTime Required: 2 – 6 hours
Curate content on a regular basis. Make lists of your most viewed or most shared
content. Make lists of posts on other blogs that you found especially useful. The
possibilities are endless. If you keep track of your content and bookmark other
blogs over time, you can put a list together fairly quickly. If you need help keeping
track as you go, use a tool like list.ly to organize your links.a
5. Review a Tool or Product Time Required: 1 – 2 hours
If you can be one of the first people to
cover a new tool or product that makes
everyone’s jobs easier, you will have an
instant winning post. It may take you some
time to learn for yourself first, but once
you’ve mastered it, explaining it won’t be
hard at all. Similarly, if there’s a tool or
product that is already widely used but you
think you have a shortcut or other insight
that can be helpful, what may be simple and obvious to you could be extremely
useful to someone else.
6. Give a Personal Take on Industry News Time Required: 1 – 3 hours
Establish your voice by bringing your knowledge to a conversation already taking
place. You should largely be sticking to the facts, but don’t be afraid to insert your
personality and bring your background knowledge to the table.
via Mashable
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7. Talk About Survey ResearchTime Required: 1 day – 1 week
Take a survey of clients, social followers, or industry peers using a service
like SurveyMonkey. Put your findings into charts and graphs and describe any
theories or conclusions you can draw.
8. Illustrate Company GoalsTime Required: 1 hour
You undoubtedly have goals you want to accomplish. Instead of sharing with only
your team, let the rest of the world know what they can expect from you. This
leads to even more content because you can follow up over time to explain what
you’ve accomplished and how, or what you were not able to achieve and why. As
in the above example, reflecting on goals can also be a great time to ask for user
feedback and strike up interactions.
via Athena Health
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Live Tweet of NMX
Live tweeting is not restricted to the
social sphere. Bring it directly to your
blog to provide content that is insanely
useful to those who were not able to
attend the conference. If applicable,
use the live blog feature in WordPress
to give your audience a social and blog
experience at once.
10. Host Reader Engaged Q&ATime Required: 2 hours
Use your social media accounts to spread the word that you will be taking
questions from your audience. Use a hashtag to keep track on Twitter. After you
carefully choose which questions will give you variety and will best allow you to
speak to your area of expertise, create a blog post with your answers.
11. Interview a Thought LeaderTime Required: 2 hours
Joe Pulizzi Interviews Lee Odden
Find someone whom you admire and who has a substantial following and ask him
or her questions that play to his or her strengths and personal and professional
experiences.
9. Live Tweet a ConferenceTime Required: 1-3 days
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DistilledU App
Having an app or extension can be
a way to bring people to your blog
to view your content. It can also be
the subject of a blog post when you
announce its creation, where to find
it, and how it works. Check out Will
Critchlow’s post on Building Chrome
Apps and Extensions to get started.
12. Hold ContestsTime Required: 1 week – 1 month
Contests can generate infinite amounts of content. At minimum, you can write one
post announcing the start of the contest and explaining the rules, and another
congratulating the winners. Even if the contest itself is taking place on social
media or through another method, you can still write about it on your blog. You
can also host contests involving user generated blog content or guest post blog
content to rack up posts for an extended period of time.
13. Publish Guest PostsTime Required: 30 minutes
If you publish only quality articles from thought leaders who have something
shareworthy to contribute, guest posts can still be valuable. Set up clear
guidelines on your site for what you would expect in a guest post, and use your
social marketing skills to build relationships with those who you would want to see
post on your site.
14. Build a Chrome App or ExtensionTime Required: 30 minutes
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15. Include a SlideShare PresentationTime Required: 1 – 4 hours
Presentations often involve thorough research and preparation, so why not take
all that hard work and share it on your blog? If you are speaking at a conference,
put your presentation up afterwards for those who were unable to attend. You
don’t have to use a pre-existing SlideShare, though. Like in the above example,
you can use SlideShare as a more interesting way to wrap-up information.
16. Summarize Marketing Campaign ResultsTime Required: 2 hours
iAcquire Linkmas Post Mortem
After you’ve spent time, energy
and resources on marketing, you’ll
want to assess the outcome. Create
graphs and charts to get a visual
representation of how your campaign
succeeded and where you need to
improve. In your blog post, be sure to
give some reasons why you achieved
the results you did so that your
audience can learn what to follow and
what to avoid.
17. Make Statistics an InfographicTime Required: 3 – 6 hours
Create your own infographic with sites like Info.gram, Picktochart, or
Easel.ly. Use facts and statistics you already have from prior research, or gather
new information with a survey.
#CSFDM 70
via Moz
Your clients may not want you to share on your blog the methods you’ve used to
help them. You can still show off your thought process and your skills, however,
by picking a company that you would like to have as a client and explaining what
type of work you would do for them.
19. Create a MapTime Required: 10 minutes
A map is simply another form of content that you can describe and customize.
Sites like Map-Generator.Net allow you to create and mark up maps. Use this
to enhance a post about a travel experience or widespread research data. An
Instagram Photo Map or something similar can further contribute to the visual
appearance of your post. In sharing your pictures you can make your blog more
personal.
20. Tell a StoryTime Required: 2 hours
Blog posts can be informal and imaginative, whether you are telling a story about
a personal experience or bringing some creativity to otherwise boring data. You
can also bring a story to life with Storybird, a site that allows you to create a
simple virtual book. It can be used as a fresh format for a How To guide like in
this example.
18. Do Hypothetical Client Work Time Required: 2 – 4 hours
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21. Teach a Skill Using Interactive ExamplesTime Required: 3 hours
Take your step-by-step guide to the next level by making it interactive somehow.
There are dozens of ways to do this, so experiment to find what makes the most
sense for your industry and skill set.
22. Explain a Strategy Using AnalogyTime Required: 2 hours
Analogies can come in handy in several cases. First, if you want to add insight to
a topic that has already been discussed at length elsewhere, using an extended
metaphor to drive in your point can shed new light on a topic and bring attention
to your opinion. An analogy can also liven up a less interesting subject, or help
to explain a more complicated process in terms that anyone can understand.
Beware of stretching subjects that are too dissimilar or of confusing your audience
with overly intricate examples. Keep it simple and relatable for the best results.
23. Share a Spreadsheet or Google DocTime Required: 1 hour
Chances are you use an Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc to help speed along
your day. If you can save other people time by sharing this file, your audience will
greatly appreciate the help. If you don’t already have a shareworthy document,
think about a process that you would like to make easier during your work day,
and try to find a solution. Blog about your results.
24. Show Examples of What Not To DoTime Required: 2 hours
This is similar to a How To post, but works by providing examples and
explanations of what doesn’t work. Ultimately, the goal is to teach people what
they should be doing by illustrating what they should avoid.
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25. Propose a Theory Time Required: 1 week – 1 year
As you take notice of changes in your
sphere of influence, see if you can find
patterns in or correlations between
data points. If you have an idea of
why these changes may be occurring
this way that you can back up with
data, people in your space will likely
be interested in listening to your theory. This can be time consuming as you want
to consider multiple possibilities and address each clearly. If your theory leads to
new strategies in your space, however, the payoff can be quite rewarding.
26. Give Kudos Time Required: 1 – 2 hours
Positively mentioning another brand can be great for your blog. You can get
increased traffic to your post coming from the other company and their followers,
and may even see reciprocity in the future. By pointing out elements of another
company that you admire, you are providing a great resource to your audience
with concrete examples.
27. Create a TimelineTime Required: 30 min – 1 hour
A timeline can be a fun way to fit a lot of information into a concise and visually
appealing post. Use a site like Dipity to add a great balance of images and text to
chronological data.
28. Answer WhyTime Required: 2 hours
You can’t teach a new skill in every post you write. Sometimes you should be
reflecting on why a certain method or tool is worth reading about. Answering
“The Bigfoot Update”
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“Why?” is just as open ended as it sounds… Why Something Works, Why
Someone Should Care, Why You Got Results… fill in the blank with whatever is
most relevant to the timing of your post.
29. Host an EventTime Required: 3 months – 1 year
Hosting an event takes planning and sometimes a big budget, but no matter what
the scale of your event is, you can use it as the subject of some blog posts. Use
your blog to announce the details of your event, talk about the planning process
and obstacles you’ve run into, highlight any featured speakers, and recap how it
went afterwards.
30. Draw a CartoonTime Required: 1 – 3 hours
A cartoon adds spark to your blog
by showing off your wit and giving
your audience something quick and
enjoyable to grasp. Cartoons can be
great to use within larger posts, but
they are also content in their own right
and can stand alone.
31. Target Industry Beginners With Tips on Getting Started Time Required: 12 hours
Many of the posts we’ve talked about so far are meant to dazzle and challenge
the brightest people in your target audience. Don’t neglect another crucial
segment: those just starting out in your field. Break down your steps and provide
more thorough examples in this type of guide. Leave out the jargon unless it is
clearly defined, and convey that your blog will continue to serve as a resource.
“Our Social Plan” via Marketoonist.com
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Getting beginners to frequent your blog can build up a loyal following of people
who will engage, ask questions, and come back for more.
By the end of Week Five you should have:
• Added variety to your list of ideas and editorial calendar
• Published blog posts in at least three different formats
• Selected a big content piece to take on by the end of the month or quarter
As you keep trying out new formats and improving your content, you’ll see what
engages your audience best, what your team finds most challenging, and what
may not be worth repeating. The only way to determine each of these is to
recognize that content strategy continues far after content is published. You must
promote the content that you put out in order to see it gain traction. Then, the last
step of the process always will be to measure so that you can keep testing and
continuously improve. In week six we’ll talk about all the different factors you may
want to measure and how you can do so.
Brace yourself—we’re about to switch from creative to analytical, but don’t worry,
you can do it!
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LAUNCH, MEASURE, REPEAT
You cannot expect to hold onto your crown if you don’t moni-
tor your content’s success. Track your progress in a meaning-
ful way by determining attainable goals and discovering the
tools and tactics that will help you measure correctly.
Week Six
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Launching ContentJust because your content revolves around a unique concept or is well crafted
doesn’t mean that it will instantly get read and shared or gain links. Content needs
to be promoted. Your content strategy should certainly incorporate launch tactics
for each campaign in an effort to maintain cohesion between the message of the
content and the promotional messages that your social, publicity, and paid media
teams will carry out.
Joel Klettke’s post on content amplification goes into great depth about why it’s
important to integrate promotion into your content strategy, and the many ways
this can be done. He includes the importance of forming personal networks and
influencer connections with which you can share your content. While outreach
and planning should start during the creation stage of content, make sure you
have the following elements covered at the time of launch.
Social Push
As soon as you set a piece of content live, you should have posts scheduled for
all your major social networks and whichever niche networks are relevant. You’ll
want to schedule posts several times the first day in order to catch people in
different time zones at the times most convenient for them. 3-5 times is sufficient.
Highlighting content via email can be powerful, but can also become ineffective
if overused. Unless someone has subscribed to your blog via RSS, sending an
email every time a new post goes up is too much.
Create a newsletter that people can subscribe to that highlights your most popular
“Before you create any more ‘great content,’ figure out how you
are going to market it first”
Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett, Get Content Get Customers
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content (as determined by social and SEO analytics) on a weekly or monthly
basis, depending on the nature of your business and the frequency at which you
post new content.
Larger pieces of content like white papers, case studies, and eBooks may very
well deserve their own email campaigns and don’t necessarily need to be featured
in a newsletter among other content. These emails should talk about the main
benefits and takeaways, provide content teasers, and if possible even include
testimonials – the same elements that you would include on a landing page.
Landing Page
Every major piece of content you launch should have its own landing page to call
home. It will allow you to send all promotional traffic to a page with one clear call
to action (i.e. Download My Free eBook) and can briefly detail the selling features
as described above. Finally, if you want to gather names and emails through a
contact capture form or ask people to Pay With a Tweet before they download,
this is the place to include those options.
This Unbounce list of 101 Landing Page Optimization Tips will walk you through
all the specifics and best practices you should know.
Whether you have a developer who can create a new page for each piece of
content as it comes out or whether you use a tool like Unbounce, Optimizely, or
LeadPages, landing pages will tie together your content strategy.
Paid Media
Having paid ads on social media may or may not be wise or necessary for each
piece of content you put out. Part of your strategy should determine a budget for
paid promotion that’s aligned with your goals. If you’re just starting out and need
to get eyeballs to your page you may want to try sponsored Facebook posts or
Twitter ads for smaller pieces of content to get your name out there. If you’ve
already developed great traction but have a particularly important message in a
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new piece of content you want to spread across a wider audience, you might want
to test how paid promotions can work for you there.
Venturing into PPC and banner ads gets trickier because if you have high quality
content, you don’t want to use a medium that many people find spammy. It’s
something you may want to experiment with for an eBook if you have creative
ideas, but these methods should never be used for blog posts or smaller pieces of
content.
Measuring Content Strategy ROIIt goes almost without saying that you can use something like Google Analytics
to track content, social and SEO all in the same place (check out Kristi Hines’
post on measuring your online marketing for more specifics on setting that up) but
there are also a ton of other tools that focus in on specific target areas.
The first step in approaching measurement has to be establishing which goals
are most important and what is realistically attainable. Not all KPIs should be looked at equally because they each measure different things. If you want to
increase conversions and you get the most conversions through email, then the
most important metric for your brand will be email subscribers, not social shares.
Outstanding content will naturally begin to grow each of these numbers, but
focusing on all metrics at once won’t provide you with enough focus. Use
analytics, market research, and your business goals to inform your team about
which metrics are critical.
To figure out the ROI of your content strategy, perform an in-depth analysis of
your content’s achievements and effects using some (or all!) of the following tools.
Social Media
One of the best ways to figure out if your content is doing well is whether or not
people are sharing it on social media. You’ll want to check each type of share on
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each of your social channels over time to make sure that as your content strategy
progresses you see more social activity.
Beyond that, you need to make sure that you’re not only generating buzz, but that
the buzz is positive. Also check to see how much additional traffic you’re gaining
from social shares. Check the sentiment in the shares and blog comments to
make sure you’re happy with the type of attention you’re getting, and then check
click through rates to see if people are actually using the links that you and others
are sharing.
While these metrics might not scream ROI, keep in mind that increased brand
awareness, heightened positive sentiment, greater user engagement and
more organic reasons for people to click on your site will all ultimately lead to
conversions.
KPIs:1. Facebook Likes, Shares, Comments
2. Tweets, Retweets, @ Mentions, Followers
3. Pinterest Likes, Comments, Followers
4. Google +1s
5. Follower count and interaction on all other social networks
6. Blog Comments
7. Video Views
8. Email subscribers
9. Sentiment
10. CTR
Tools:
1. To track relevant Facebook metrics, the best place to go is Facebook itself.
Facebook Insights allows you to track likes, impressions, and interaction with
apps. Domain Insights are equally important. Here you’ll be notified if someone
links to your site via his or her Facebook status.
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2. For Twitter, there are several available options including Twitter Counter and
TwitSprout. Each has unique features to check out.
Twitter Counter compares Followers v. Tweets over time.
Twitsprout monitors not just you, but your audience as well. Plus, they’ll track your
Facebook metrics alongside your Twitter stats.
3. If you’re active on Pinterest – an essential network if your content is loaded with
quality images (which it should be) – track your Pinterest activity with ViralTag.
4. Have videos on YouTube? Go to the Analytics section of your YouTube account
to get all the data you need from demographics to share count.
5. Looking for Google Plus analytics? The best place to go is right to Google
Analytics. The G+ Business info page explains more.
6. For click through rates, bit.ly is your best option. First, tag your URL correctly
using Google URL Builder so that you can track your link in Google Analytics
later. Then, copy and paste into bit.ly so that you can track clicks by quantity, time
and date, referral source and geographic location.
7. Use Spark Score to calculate overall social sentiment. This metric combines
social “sparks”—likes, tweets, etc.—with Net Promoter Score, which rates
customers based on how often they publicly talk about your brand and how
positive or negative this feedback is.
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Social Mention is another site with a sentiment gauge. It also monitors and
updates mentions in real time so you can look at the
conversation your content is causing right at that moment.
8. There are also all-in-one social tools such as
SimplyMeasured and Crowdbooster, but both these tools
are paid. If you’re willing to make the investment—they
offer exceptional data organization and visualization.
A simpler, free tool that counts up all social shares and
tracks multiple URLs at once is SharedCount.
While you want to look at all of the
data you collect from your different
social networks as a way to analyze
your content, you should also take
this opportunity to assess your social
strategy. If you’ve developed a highly
engaged audience on one platform but
haven’t seen much traction on another,
you might want to consider closing your less influential account and focusing all
your resources in areas that are working well for your brand.
Similarly, take note if a certain format or theme in your content works better on
one platform than another, or if a certain time of day represents the highest level
of activity for a particular content type, and rearrange your promotional social
media schedule accordingly.
SEO
As your team implements your content strategy, you want to see a correlating
increase in related SEO metrics. These include pageviews and time on page for
each piece of content so that you can see how many people are clicking on your
posts and then staying there long enough to read them. The longer the time on
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pages, the higher the engagement.
It’s also important to check out what pages people are visiting after they read your
content. If one of your goals is to increase sales, look at how many people are
filling in your lead gen forms or looking at your company’s offerings or portfolio
pages after your content. Even if you have an exceptional number of pageviews
or social shares, if these are not supporting your primary goals you may have to
try different content formats or topics, or include calls to action that will directly
lead to the pages where people can take the next steps that you desire.
KPIs:
1. Pageviews
2. Keyword Rank
3. Organic Traffic
4. Search Queries
5. Backlinks
Tools:
1. Start with Google Analytics to get your basic overview on information like
Pageviews to see how many eyeballs are seeing your page, not just how many
are talking about it to others on social.
Other tools like MixPanel and Kissmetrics can also give you useful data if you
prefer an alternate platform.
2. Regularly check your site health on Google Webmaster Tools because
problems can help explain why you’re not seeing the numbers you were hoping
for. It alerts you to possible issues such as malware detection, removal of pages,
and robots.txt blocking pages.
3. Look at the organic keyword report in SEMRush for keyword rank, traffic, and
trends over time. You’ll be able to tell if the copy in your content is lifting you in
key areas.
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4. There are a few excellent ways to
get backlink data, but some of the top
industry standard tools are Ahrefs,
Open Site Explorer, and Majestic SEO.
These reports are crucial because
you want to figure out how people
are accessing your content besides
directly through your site.
A healthy backlink portfolio is crucial because Google takes several factors into
account to rank your site. You want to avoid spammy sites linking to you, too
many links coming from the same domain, and an abundance of exact match
anchor text. If you find that any of these are issues, you might have to use the
Link Disavow tool or seek out further technical recommendations.
If you work with an SEO to clean up backlinks that you don’t want, from a content
strategist’s point of view your job is to create fresh, outstanding content that
people will want to link to. Your goal should be to get high authority sites to give
you natural links. This could involve a great deal of outreach before, during, and
after the content creation process. iAcquire’s link building guides will tell you
everything you need to know about that.
As you continue to create new content, checking your backlinks will give you a
firm grasp on what content your audience finds linkworthy. Take this strongly into
consideration as you want to become a go-to authority that people will continually
look to and link to, increasing both your traffic, engagement, and search rankings.
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The same way that you can use this SEO data to inform your content decisions,
consider if any of your findings merit a change in link building tactics. Try to find
correlations between content types and outreach methods that worked well or fell
short to see if resources can be divided up a better way.
The Bottom Line
Unfortunately more tweets or higher search volume doesn’t automatically equal
more dollar signs. In fact, proving the ROI of your content strategy may be your
biggest challenge. If you can piece together all of the above key performance
indicators with typical bottom line metrics, however, you have a guaranteed recipe
for success.
First, allow me to put a huge caveat in the above. While a content strategist has
to report to stakeholders who will want to talk about ROI, it’s just as important to
examine your strategies from other angles. If you don’t see a huge revenue jump
right away that does not mean you have failed. It takes time to build a following
and produce quality content, so you have to be able to speak to the strengths of
your writers, designers, and developers and commend great work when you see
it. Of course, though, it’s always nice to be able to prove the impact you’ve had on
other areas of the business.
KPIs6. Leads Generated
7. Conversions
8. Customer Retention Rate
9. ROI
First let’s recall the formula for ROI:
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What you’ll need to do from here is calculate exactly what revenue can be linked
back to your content strategy. With a firm grasp of what you want to measure and
what will determine success to meet your earlier stated goals, you’ll know where
to look.
There’s no one magical tool that can separate this information for you, but well
tagged and organized analytics data will help track conversion paths:
1. How many people converted after clicking on a link in a social share?
2. How many converted after watching a video or viewing other content?
3. How many customers return after being engaged by organic channels?
The way to start is to determine what a conversion means for you (a sales lead,
an email subscribe, a form filled out) and how these conversions translate to ROI
as this determination will likely be made by another team depending on what it
is you’re tracking. When this process is in place you’ll be able to track actionable
metrics, not vanity metrics that might look good but aren’t supporting your goals.
Each of these and other paths are relatively simple to track if you use analytics
properly. This is a big if and the scope of analytics is past this eBook. Content
strategists should be working with SEOs if they do not have extensive knowledge
“Quit counting fans, followers, and blog subscribers like bottle
caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with
and through the community that actually cares about what
you’re doing”
Amber Naslund, Co-Founder & President, SideraWorks
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on this topic, but you can look through these resources for an overview:
• Google Analytics Training
• Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models – Avinash Kaushik
• The Bottom Line Guide To Advanced Segmentation – Tom Harari
• How To Trash Your Google Analytics Account With Campaign Tagging –
Annie Cushing
There are hundreds of other posts out there, but be cautious as search is
constantly changing so analytics platforms and the strategies behind them are
updated continually. Check the date on any resource and make sure you’re
looking at the most up to date information before you move ahead.
Think about the objective of content strategy: creating meaningful, excellent,
and engaging content. If you succeed at this, it’s inevitable that an increase in
people coming to your site, appreciating it and interacting with it, will lead to the
best kind of advertising — free word of mouth. You’ll generate leads and gain
new customers. You’ll also hold on to old customers who have a reason to keep
returning to your site for more. The real bottom line is this: if you put energy into creating an out of this world content strategy, a positive increase in ROI will surely follow.
By the end of Week Six you should have:
• Put a content promotion plan in place
• Tracked and measured critical KPIs
• Analyzed your metrics in a way that tracks the progress of your goals
You’ve made it! This is merely the beginning, however. You didn’t think content
strategy ends after six weeks, did you?
To keep up all you’ve put in place, follow the guidelines for week seven and
beyond.
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ALL HAIL THE KING OF CONTENT
You now have all the tools you need to go out and make phe-
nomenal, mind-blowing content. Content worthy of the title
“king,” even.
Week Seven & Beyond
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As you navigate your way through your content calendar, restructuring your
schedule to reflect the progress you’ve tracked on previous posts, you’ll see that
content strategy is more than a cyclical pattern of content generation. If you want
to be the type of king forever remembered in history, you’ll empower your team to
strive for innovation.
As you move forward, keep these points in mind so that no matter how large your
content grows in volume, creativity, or popularity, you remain the commanding
and wise leader:
• Content is only powerful when original, useful, engaging, and most importantly, when it is read and shared.
• Content should always tell a story.
• Content strategy is a balancing act; practice maintaining organization and leaving room for spontaneous bursts of genius.
• Content that is not promoted is sure to fail. Social media and email marketing are there to supplement your content creation.
• You’re the king of your strategy, but the real center of all content is the user. Your opinion comes second to that of your audience, and their wants and needs should be the main motivation of your content.
Since you’ll be collecting information, engaging with your audience, and
measuring progress throughout each phase of your content cycle, you’ll know
when you need to go back to this guide and your documents to readjust and make
improvements.
“The main goal of content strategy is to use words and data
to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful,
interactive experiences. We have to be experts in all aspects of
communication in order to do this effectively..”
Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy Director, Razorfish
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APPENDIXBlog ManagmentWordpress 34, 53, 55, 67
Set up and manage your blog or even your entire site.
Yoast 53Ensure your WordPress pages are optimized with this plugin that tracks on page elements and automatically generates XML Sitemaps.
Zemanta 53Find related posts and images on your CMS as you write.
Content CreationDipity 72
Present information in a multimedia timeline.
Easel.ly 69Edit premade themes to create infographics and data visualizations.
Google Alert 53Receive email updates each time queries you select are mentioned on the web.
GrammarBase Chrome 54Automatically check your grammar, spelling and style as you write in your browser.
Info.gram 69Illustrate embeddable interactive infographics.
Map-Generator.Net 70Enter an address and receive an HTML snippet with a map for that location.
Picktochart 69Customize and publish infographics.
Storybird 70Publish short stories that work on any platform.
Content ManagmentDemand Metric Content Audit Template 10
Organize and track information like content type, location, audience, and status.
Editorially 53Work with several authors on content, have conversations right on the page and save different versions as you go through rounds of edits.
GatherContent 53Plan content format, collaborate with teams, and export to your CMS when you have your final product completed.
Hubspot Editorial Calendar 54Keep daily content topics and their related target personas and offers in order with this editorial calendar template for Excel.
list.ly 65Make embeddable lists of links that any user can contribute to.
Vertical Measures Editorial Calendar 54
Weave your deadlines, goals, and metrics into your content calendar with this spreadsheet template.
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WordPress Editorial Calendar 55Drag and drop your WordPress posts into this editorial calendar right in the CMS itself.
Idea Organizationbubbl.us 9
Visually map out brainstorm sessions.
Evernote 51Separate notes in virtual notebooks that are easily shared and transferred between people and devices.
Gliffy 9Create flowcharts, wireframes and technical drawings.
Microsoft OneNote 51Collect notes, links, web pages and other media and organize into notebooks and tabs.
Popplet 51Map out tasks, ideas, and images in galleries where you can collaborate in real time.
Realtime Board 51Use this virtual, collaborative whiteboard for drawing, sticking notes, inserting media, and sharing conversations.
Landing Page CreationLeadPages 77
Create landing pages or select from templates that are sorted by historical conversion rate.
Optimizely 77Track clicks and conversions and have Optimizely’s technical team implement any tests and changes you want.
Unbounce 77Build, publish, and A/B test landing pages without any coding.
Market ResearchExperian Simmons 27, 51
Utilize survey data from thousands of consumers in every segment.
Google Brand Impressions 18Discover a brand’s online appearance, most popular topics and locations it impacts.
Hoovers 14Look up company information such as competitors, financials, executives and social media links.
LexisNexis 14Access a wide array of data including online news research, public records, and business profiles.
MarketingCharts 50View thousands of charts in this daily publication of marketing-related data.
Net Promoter Score 80Maintain customer relationships and measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sentiment.
Nielsen 51Examine global consumer insights.
Pew Internet 50Explore statistics, case studies, survey data and trend data.
SlideShare 69Post presentation decks.
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SurveyMonkey 66Design and distribute surveys and analyze
the results.
Project Managment15Five 52
Take the pulse of your team with this report form that asks questions about what is and isn’t working in their roles on a weekly basis.
Asana 52Delegate projects, priorites, and due dates and customize team members’ views with filters.
Pivotal Tracker 52Share with a simple, identical workflow for each member and have the ability to accept or reject assigned tasks.
Trello 52, 54Assign tasks and due dates to team members, have conversations, upload files and organize into lists and categories that you determine.
SEOAhrefs 83
Check backlinks lost and gained.
Google Analytics 9, 41, 78, 80, 82, 86Analyze traffic to your site, trace customer paths, and learn how visitors are interacting with different elements.
Google URL Builder 80Enter custom campaign parameters information and the URL Builder outputs a properly tagged URL.
Google Webmaster Tools 82Receive messages about your site health directly from Google and use their tools to test features like page speed and stractured data markup.
Kissmetrics 82Analyze the activity of your site’s visitors on an individual basis.
Majestic SEO, 83Get domain and link information, with charts breaking down backlinks, anchor text, and individual pages
Majestic SEO Comparator 15Compare information like indexed URLs, referring domains and backlinks.
MixPanel 82Segment data by custom groups and send notifications to customers based on their actions
MozScape 10Pull Open Site Explorer information into Excel.
Open Site Explorer 10, 15, 83Learn who’s linking to your site and competitors’ sites, and find out the authority of these links.
ScreamingFrog 10Crawl links, images, and onsite SEO elements like meta descriptions and headings.
SEMRush 14, 82Monitor traffic, keywords, backlinks, and AdSense data and compare against competitors.
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Social Analyticsbit.ly 41, 80
Shorten, customize and save links and then analyze click through time and location.
Crowdbooster 81Track analytics for all major social networks as well as publish posts from the platform at the times they calculate to be optimal for your audience.
Facebook Insights 79Get metrics like referral traffic and engagement for your Facebook page.
SharedCount 81Determine the number of social shares per given URL.
SimplyMeasured 81View analytics for all major social media networks.
Social Crawlytics 10, 16Schedule monitoring of your social metrics and track most shared authors.
Social Mention 17, 41, 49, 81Search social mentions in real time and analyze by sentiment, reach, and source.
Spark Score 80Understand the sentiment behind social media engagement, blog posts, and forum discussions.
TwitSprout 80Analyze Twitter metrics for your brand, your audience, and competitors, and receive tips such as the best time to tweet for your followers.
Twitter Counter 80Examine Twitter metrics side by side, like followers versus tweets over time.
ViralTag 80Schedule Pinterest pins, enhance images, and track repins, likes, and comments.
Social MediaFollowerwonk 16
Search Twitter bios and analyze, track and sort Twitter followers for you and your competitors.
Hootsuite 15, 36Schedule social posts, monitor conversations and measure analytics for various social networks, blogging platforms and apps.
Pay With A Tweet 77Sell your content for the price of a preset promotional tweet.
Quora 50Ask and answer questions divided by categories and discover and follower influencers in your space.
Reddit 50Join or start conversations and communities and follow emerging trends via most popular discussions.
Topsy 17Gather Twitter analytics, discover social trends, and search Twitter by links, tweets, photos, and videos.
Tweetdeck 36Manage your Twitter with custom feeds, filters, and ability to schedule Tweets.
