The content marketing guide (11.60)

The Content Marketing GuideThe secret to building successful content strategies

www.strategyinternetmarketing.co.uk


A practical 24-step plan you can act on today

3

The Content Marketing Guide

ContentsIntroduction: What is content marketing? And how can this book help you develop an effective content marketing strategy for your business? ................................................P5

Part One: Preparing A StrategyDefining your goals ................................................................................................................................. P11

Developing buying personas .............................................................................................................P13

Auditing your website ............................................................................................................................P15

Establishing message architecture .................................................................................................. P17

Researching your competitors ........................................................................................................... P19

Further research ........................................................................................................................................ P21

Keyword research .....................................................................................................................................P23

Brainstorming ideas ................................................................................................................................P25

Creating an event calendar ................................................................................................................. P27

Identifying influencers .......................................................................................................................... P29

Part Two: ImplementationUnderstanding the buying process ................................................................................................. P33

Mapping the content audit to the buying process .................................................................. P35

Identifying and filling the gaps ......................................................................................................... P37

Creating a six-month content plan .................................................................................................. P39

Writing content briefs ............................................................................................................................ P41

Gaining blogger feedback .................................................................................................................... P43

Writing a promotion plan ..................................................................................................................... P45

Resource allocation ................................................................................................................................. P47

Project creation ......................................................................................................................................... P49

Publishing the content ........................................................................................................................... P51

Promoting the content ........................................................................................................................... P53

Measuring success ................................................................................................................................... P55

Reflecting on results ............................................................................................................................... P57

Adapting the plan ..................................................................................................................................... P59

http://www.strategyi

4


Part Three: Case StudiesThomsonlocal .............................................................................................................................................P63

Melbourne Metro ......................................................................................................................................P65

Ambius ........................................................................................................................................................... P67

The Home Depot .......................................................................................................................................P69

Mailchimp .....................................................................................................................................................P71

Liberty Mutual ............................................................................................................................................P73

Buzzstream ..................................................................................................................................................P75

Chipotle .........................................................................................................................................................P77

Vistaprint ......................................................................................................................................................P79

Mr Porter ....................................................................................................................................................... P81

Xerox ...............................................................................................................................................................P83

Starbucks ......................................................................................................................................................P85

The Content Marketing Guide ©Strategy Internet Marketing 2014

Written by Kath Dawson, Nick Ellis, Laura Colledge & Estelle Puleston

Design and Layout by Elisabetta Bruno

Edited by Nick Ellis

Contributing staff members:Kath Dawson, Creative DirectorDonna Moore, Marketing DirectorHolly Hayman, Senior Client ManagerThomas King, Senior Client ManagerDavid Sparks, Senior Client ManagerStephen Lo Gatto, Creative Content Project ManagerBecky Martin-Jones, Digital PR ManagerElisabetta Bruno, Creative DesignerJimmy McGregor


5


Every walk of life has its own buzzwords, phrases and three-letter abbreviations; its own coded language that those in the know speak and is largely impenetrable to outsiders. The digital marketing world is no different to any

other in this respect, as typified by its concept-du-jour, ‘content marketing’.

We imagine that you’ve had conversations similar to this over the past 12 months:

‘Hey there online business person, you need to do some content marketing!’

‘I do?’

‘Yes! You need content! Go and make some content! Go!’

‘Er, what kind of content?’

‘Content to use for content marketing, of course!’

This is unhelpful to say the very least and probably leaves you with many more questions than it does answers, questions such as: What is content marketing and why should I care? What kind of content should I be producing? What’s the benefit to my business?

This Content Marketing Guide ebook will, hopefully, answer these questions for you and help contextualise content marketing in terms of a wider digital strategy.

But this ebook goes much further.

Over the course of the next two chapters, we offer a 24-step process for researching, creating, publishing and promoting content that will have a real impact on traffic to your website, and ultimately your bottom line.

It’s practical, easily-actionable, nonsense-free advice that applies as much to small local businesses with tiny marketing budgets as it does to monolithic corporations with near unlimited funds.

Welcome to The Content Marketing Guide



6


In the third and final chapter, we examine some real-world content marketing examples, looking at why the content has been successful and how your business can learn from it.

What is content marketing?Here at Strategy, we define ‘content’ in this context as any piece of work that has a creative angle. This includes everything from a simple 500 word post on a company blog to an all-singing, all-dancing, parallax-scrolling stand-alone website.

The ‘marketing’ element of the content ensures that the focus of any work is firmly on the needs and interests of the consumer. It is content that looks to answer any questions customers (existing or potential) might have, or provide them with something stimulating that is relevant and valuable.

Regardless of the form it takes, creative content should provide high-quality information displayed in a creatively innovative way that best encourages customer engagement.

Creative content is centred on an idea, theme or issue rather than a product. The marketing edge of the content acts as a subtle undertone, establishing a brand’s authoritative voice and not being heavily promotional or sales-like.

Perhaps more than anything, successful creative content will attract the attention of thought-leaders in your niche area, therefore reaching out to a large consumer-base who will respect and trust your brand’s content.

In short, we are looking at non-product content that explores an area related to your business and is relevant and useful to your customers or prospective audience.

Why content marketing is importantPre-2011, it was relatively simple to game search engines such as Google. Links and keywords formed the basis of how high pages were ranked in a search engine’s results pages, and there were numerous methods for pointing numerous links at your website with relatively little effort. In other words, spam worked.

Since 2011, Google have been fighting spam via various updates to its algorithms. Panda, the first big-hitting update in the spam war, targeted practices such as keyword stuffing (ramming a website’s pages full of variations on phrases people were searching for) and duplicating content across multiple pages or domains.

Next came Penguin, which looked at the quality of links pointing towards a site. If a significant proportion of links to your site were from spammy websites (sometimes referred to as content or link farms) then you were in trouble.

Today, links are still important, but spam no longer works.

Google’s argument is that all they want to see is what consumers want to see: high quality original content that by its very nature will attract links and social shares, and hence boost a website’s rankings in the search results. As mentioned above, this content could be anything from a well-written, informative blog post to a fancy interactive website.

Google’s latest update, Hummingbird, is more of a structural update than an algorithmic one. The intention of Hummingbird is to move the search engine away


7


from using keywords as the sole method for returning search results. Instead Google wants to understand the context of a searcher’s intentions, and also be able to interpret more conversational search queries, especially important given the continuing rise of voice-activated search.

Today, keywords are still important, but spam no longer works.

So the question ‘why is content marketing important in today’s world?’ is a simple one to answer: in order to offer a better service to our existing customers, and to attract new ones.

Hold on, hasn’t this always been a fundamental part of building a successful business? Yes indeed. It’s only the medium that has changed.

The past, present and futureThe way it’s talked about in certain circles, you’d be forgiven for thinking that content marketing is an entirely new concept. Hardly. As you can see from the examples opposite, companies have been practising the art of engaging their customers through various forms of own-brand media for well over a century.

Perhaps the most recognisable of the below is the Michelin Guide. The Michelin brothers created the guide because they wanted more cars on the road. Without more cars, they wouldn’t be able to sell more of their tyres. Did the original guides directly sell tyres in their pages? No, they offered valuable advice to motorists, from driving and maintenance tips to maps and of course the best places to stay and eat.

What the guides did directly do was to associate the Michelin brand with motoring in the minds of those early car drivers. The guides were useful and informative and built trust with motorists. Which brand would motorists choose when they needed a replacement tyre? Exactly.

Although some of these historical examples are arguably more sales-y than others, they all share a commonality in that they offer additional value to the customer.

For existing customers of Jell-O and Lego, there’s a ‘Here’s how to make it even more enjoyable!’ aspect to the recipe book and the magazine respectively.

For people looking to buy a new blender, ‘here’s a video of the blender we manufacture blending … an iPad! (And many other Apple and non-Apple products.)

Content marketing efforts today have largely moved to the digital sphere, where the sheer volume of content platforms, from desktop PCs to tablets, mobiles and gaming consoles, presents its own unique set of challenges. Likewise, technology has opened doors for different types of content that the Michelin brothers could never have dreamed of at the dawn of the 20th Century.

Further complicating matters is the increasing complexity of online consumers, who have higher expectations and increased desire for immediacy and efficiency that were absent even 10 years ago.

But regardless of the platform or the technology or consumer, the fundamental principles remain the same. As to the methods, well, let’s get started …


8


John Deere customer magazine (1898) Michelin Guides, first printed in 1900

Jell-O recipe books, first printed 1904 Proctor & Gamble soap operas (1930s)

Lego fan club magazine (1987) Microsoft’s company blog (2004)

Blendtec’s Will It Blend? series (2007) The Lego Movie (2013)


Get in touchFind out how we can drive forward your digital marketing. Call our Business Development Manager, Mark Poppleton, between 9am and

5pm Monday to Friday on 0845 838 0936 or via our contact form.

Performance Driven Marketing

Content Marketing

Bespoke content strategies that deliver increased traffic, sales, conversions and leads

http://www.strategyinternetmarketing.co.uk/pay-on-results-content-marketing/

10

Part One

Preparation


In this section we’ll unwrap the tools, techniques and processes you need to build the foundations of a successful content

marketing campaign


11


Defining your goalsWhen you’re running a marathon,

you need to know where the finish line is

What do you want? When do you want it by? Why do you want it? Simple questions with difficult answers.

Simply extending your current business strategy to content marketing is a good first step, but to excel at content marketing you need to see where your business strategy could be adapted and expanded to bolster its strengths and eliminate its weaknesses.

Content marketing is an opportunity to meet new targets and form new objectives, not just a new way of meeting your old goals. To form decent new goals, you must understand the strengths and weaknesses of content marketing.

What is content marketing good for?We’ll look at this in more detail further down the line, but the key strengths of content marketing are increased brand awareness, word of mouth reputation building, and improved trust.

Its main weakness is that it is not a channel, like PPC or direct TV marketing, on which you can get great results by simply ‘plugging in’ to your current method of generating and converting leads – it’s marketing based primarily around exploiting original opportunities and creativity, not formulae and optimising processes.

To realise your content marketing goals, find out where your business strategy’s strengths and weaknesses and content marketing’s strengths and weaknesses meet. This will give you some specific, achievable objectives to work towards.

“Without careful identification of goals at the beginning, you run the risk of creating content that is technically and aesthetically pleasing but conflicts with your objectives, doesn’t appeal to your target audience, or has all the appeal of a damp towel.”

Donna Moore on creating goals


12


What are you going to do if your content marketing under-performs compared to your expectations? Add more resources? Market through more channels? Or start again from scratch? It’s up to you, but keep something up your sleeve.

Step 3 – Create a contingency plan

In order to achieve your goals, you’re going to need to use content marketing effectively and with precision. This guide should help you to get a deep understanding of content marketing, so you’ve already got that covered.

Step 2 – Understand content’s strengths

Before even beginning to plan your content strategy, take some time to carefully consider your business objectives and goals and make sure you have a firm understanding of the direction in which you want to take your business.

Step 1 – Identify your needs

You need to understand what you want before you can get what you want

Prepare for success

Image credit.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/leafbug/3814616215/sizes/l/

13


Developing buying personasNow you know what you want,

but what do your customers want?

So now you need customers on board. But which people, and how are you going to reach them? Before you begin, remember that content marketing is all about win-win, not compromise. You’re not grovelling for approval, you’re offering

genuine value and getting something tangible from the increased exposure.

Whatever you do, don’t compromise in order to appeal to more people. There is always some way of getting through to your audience on your terms, so you never have to cast your net too wide.

A campaign with many irrelevant views is not as strong as a more focused campaign, so make sure you know that the people interested in your content form a valuable, long-term audience.

Content with personalityContent that aims to meet the needs of your whole target audience is likely to be only loosely relevant to each group and not specific enough to fully engage with everyone.

In order to reach as much of your audience as possible it’s a good idea to map out four distinct buying personas and decipher their average age, along with their needs and a backstory.

You need to work out how each persona group contributes to and affects the industry, and then your business. Who are the influencers? Who are the thought leaders? Who are the main spenders?

Using Michael King’s guitar shop’s buying personas (slide 16) as an example, you can generate any number of personas you want for your business.

“Fleshing out your personas with even a brief backstory provides a useful benchmark for everyone involved in the project, and alleviates issues such as choosing a dubstep soundtrack to a video that’s aimed squarely at retirees.”

Kath Dawson on persona creation



http://www.slideshare.net/ipullrank/targeting-humans-by-michael-king

14


Step 1 – Know your customer base

Step 2 – Know your friends

Step 3 – Know their voice

The first step in building a convincing persona is to use your existing information. Divide your sales up into demographics (it’s OK if they’re a little crude at this stage), and identify the most important demographics you sell to. Your sales and customer service teams should help here.

You’ll need at least one target who’s not a buyer; someone who influences other people to buy. What kind of person is talking about your business, or businesses like yours? Hit up Twitter and find out who’s on your side. (More on this later.)

Put yourself in the position of one of your customers. They’re a human like you, so they’ve got human reasons for buying from you – sometimes rational, sometimes emotional, always understandable. Write down all the reasons ‘you’ made a purchase. What content would appeal to ‘you’?

Creating a persona from scratch is easier than it sounds; just tell their story

How to build a human


15


“A website audit can be a time-consuming affair, especially for an ecommerce site with hundreds of product pages. It’s best to concentrate on key pages, such as the home page and category pages, and audit a representative sample of product pages.”

Kath Dawson on content audits

This is a great time to look back over your goals and your personas. Have you already been targeting your personas, and it hasn’t really worked? Check your methods, by all means, but also make absolutely sure that your audience are who you think they are.

Are your goals realistic? Is the content you’ve produced so far in line with your goals, or does it suggest that you could benefit more by focusing somewhere else?

The information from the data you already have could be invaluable, make sure you’re referring to it regularly throughout the content marketing process.

Review your plan so far

Analysing the content you already have with a dispassionate, critical eye can teach you a lot. What’s gone wrong and what’s gone right for you in the past is a good indicator as to what you can expect to work in the future.

You can also see if you have a content theme that’s working really well, such as blog posts, videos or buying guides, meaning that you can easily expand the concept to new topics and areas.

You should review traffic to your existing content in whatever analytics software you’ve been using, especially checking for quality and relevance – see our step-by-step guide for more detail, but remember that loyalty can have a disproportionately large input on your bottom line.

Look more closely at what you already have, take some time to take stock

Auditing your website



16


Step 2 – Check for high quality traffic

High volumes of traffic is fine, but unless you’re getting something from your visitors they’re costing you money. Signs of high quality traffic, from least certain to most certain, include time spent on-site, number of pages visited, social shares (including blog posts) and purchases.

Step 3 – Give a quality score

Each page of content has a purpose in the buying process, whether that’s awareness, trigger, preference, purchase or loyalty. Score your content based on how well it fulfils its purpose, total up those scores for each section, and identify and fill any gaps. (More on this later.)

Review your content to check it for quality. If it’s riddled with spelling errors, badly conceived or doesn’t even really make sense, your priority should be to fix it (if it’s already drawing in some traffic) or destroy it (if no-one’s really interested).

Step 1 – Use your head

And how not to throw good content after bad

How to audit your content


17


“Your voice and values will help determine the direction of your content. Whether you’re trying to establish yourself as ethical, sustainable, low cost or luxury, your content can reinforce this message.”

Donna Moore on message architecture

In her book Content Strategy at Work, Margot Bloomstein defines ‘message architecture’ as the ‘hierarchy of communication goals’, or the priority you give to what you want to say to your customers.

Having a strong awareness of which messages have priority is essential when planning and implementing content, as consistency will strengthen your brand’s image and shape its perceived personality.

In order to get your ‘message architecture’ right, you need to get the input of as many stakeholders as possible – including and especially your most loyal customers.

What is a ‘message architecture’?

Content on its own is fantastic, potentially a lovely gesture to the community which supports you and your business. If it’s not saying exactly what you want it to, though, the content you’re creating could be disrupting your brand image

and ultimately proving counter-productive.

As an example of how this could go wrong, imagine a luxury sports car manufacturer providing in-depth car maintenance guides for free. Imagine they’re so good, any-one could learn how to become a mechanic purely from these engaging, beautifully-illustrated guides. People would read the content, share the content and enjoy the content, but the message is wrong.

Not only does it draw attention to the risk of these expensive machines breaking, it also suggests that the cars are for the hands-on, mechanically-adept artisan – when marketing and branding should be directed at the cash-rich, time-poor businessman or financial wunderkind.

Even well-intentioned high quality content can, in fact, be harmful.

Lay out what you want to say about yourself, from most to least important

Establishing message architecture


http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0123919223

18


If all the most important values are to do with trust, or all of the most common opposite values involve price in some way, you’ve got a clear theme to work with. If you can identify a theme, consider treating it as a ‘super-value’.

Step 3 – Identify any themes

What you want to stand for should align closely with what your customers want, so feel free to get input from any friendly clients or customers on this point. Once again, sort these values and their opposites in order of importance.

Write your company values on cards, trying to think about your company like an outsider would. On the reverse of each card, write the opposite value. Once finished, get as many stakeholders as possible to help sort the value/opposing value pairs in order of importance.

Step 2 – What do you want to stand for?

Step 1 – What do you stand for?

Make sure your content represents your values

Say what you mean


19


“Competitors come in various guises and sizes – don’t assume that the big players in your industry will have the best performing campaigns. Look at everyone from industry bloggers, the latest start-up and your peers to measure your audience’s engagement.”

Thomas King on competitor research

It’s never what your competitors have done that’s of interest. In a crowded content market, knowing what your competitors have done just tells you what’s already taken – what’s interesting is how they’ve done it.

Look at the sources they’ve got on display – where did they get their data? See which experts they’ve tapped for quotes – where did they come from? Examine the styles of images and backgrounds they’ve used – why did these work and how were they chosen?

Some parts of what your competitors have done might appear to be a one-off, impossible to reproduce, but even amazing viral hits typically have just a few influential people behind them. If you can find out who those people are, you can aim your content at people like them.

How do they do it?

Competitor research is usually quite difficult, as you are often attempting to reverse-engineer a process from a finished product. That finished product could be a website or a running shoe, but ultimately you’re going to be cross-

referencing a lot of metrics and attempting to judge success from a position where you’ve got no visibility.

That’s not to say it’s impossible, it’s just that normally it’s pretty difficult.

With competitor research based on content marketing, by contrast, you’ve got a wealth of information at your fingertips. Your competitors are trumpeting their achievements from the rooftops, and everything they’re doing – all the research, all the planning, all the decisions – is visible within the end product.

Learn from what your competitors are doing, then create better content

Researching your competitors


20


First, you should look at your competitor’s content as a combination of parts. What platforms did they use to promote it? How thorough was the research? What tone did they strike? Then, look at how the parts fit together to create a greater whole – what themes emerge?

Step 3 – Break the content down

You can use the free version of OpenSiteExplorer to measure incoming links, and any social share buttons should give an estimate of how successful the content has been on social media. If the content was really easy to find using Google, that’s another strong indicator of success.

Step 2 – Analyse their level of success

To find competitors with good content, you can either try searching for content within your industry (for instance, “dentistry infographic”, “web design tutorials”), or you can visit known competitors and see what they’re doing. The first method is more likely to find interesting content.

Step 1 – Find competitors with content

“If you know your enemies and yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles” - Sun Tzu

Competitive content


21


“It’s not essential to have an in-house PR team to hitch a ride on current affairs. Get everyone in your organisation into the habit of sharing news that they feel is relevant to the business, then act on any stories that you think present good opportunities.”

Becky Martin-Jones on news

Newsjacking is the art of hijacking a promising story just before it explodes. This means your research will take you deep into the communities most relevant to your business, delving into the forums and blogs with the most niche interests imaginable in order to catch that story when it’s still hidden from a mass audience.

It’s also a good idea to research where other stories about your niche have come from. If a journalist got a story from Reddit, hit up relevant subreddits for leads; if a story came from local news in your area consider reading your local newspapers for more information.

By researching the communities previous stories came from, rather than trying to mimic the content of the actual stories, you stand a much better chance of generating very successful content.

Newsjacking

Preparatory research is important, and if you’ve followed this guide so far you’re now in a position to get started.

You need to make sure that your personas reflect an audience that’s sufficiently large in size to reach your goals, and you need to ascertain which bits of your communication plan are most likely to resonate with people.

A number of methods can be used to obtain this information. First and foremost, use your eyes – what’s already in the news? What are your kids’ friends talking about? What businesses are going from strength to strength?

If you think you have a couple of decent ideas from your informal research, begin doing some more rigorous investigation.

Discover fresh opportunities, trending news stories, and popular platforms

Further research


22


You need to know what’s relevant to you. A multi-billion dollar PR campaign is probably not relevant to you, a timely, amusing graphic could be relevant for you (above is Kit Kat’s riff on the announcement of a new Pope), and an informative article will always be relevant.

Step 2 – Identify decent topics

Find out what excites communities in your niche, see if stories make the jump to the big-time. If they do, you’ve got a prime newsjacking opportunity. Even if they just stay within the community, they’re a great sign that you have a powerful content topic.

Step 3 – Do your background reading

Once you know the topics that do well in your sector, and you know the forms that are achievable for you, research these even more thoroughly. You have to know the topics and the communities around the topics intimately, and the form just as well.

Step 1 – Investigate possible forms

Start to flesh out the content of your content marketing plan

Strategies for further research


23


“Researching search behaviour helps you understand audience demand and may identify similar content for the same topic. The process may also give you the chance to hone your content plan in accordance with known trends.”

David Sparks on keyword research

The tool which is most obscure to people outside the SEO industry is Ubersuggest.com, which can generate long lists of keyphrases very quickly and is super-simple. Use thesaurus sites for a similar effect – but bear in mind that direct synonyms are usually already automatically translated by Google, and you won’t get any more ‘real’ search results by using more of them.

The most unsurprising tool you can use is Google itself. Not only can it give you an idea of the kind of content which Google’s algorithms favour, but with autocomplete suggestions you can see exactly what people are searching for.

Finally, the most precise (but also probably smallest-scale) tool you can use is Google Analytics, which will give you the definitive information on how people are already finding your site.

The tools of the trade

Keyword research is part craft, part art, and extends way past the SEO benefits you’ll get for your article.

Truly in-depth keyword research involves nothing less than uncovering every aspect of the way your audience thinks, acts and talks about businesses like your own. It is one of the most powerful and far-reaching methods of market research anyone can carry out, and the tools to perform it are currently completely free.

The tools to generate and rank keywords are typically pretty reliable, but they’ve got limitations which you’ll discover and test as you get more comfortable with them. For now, let’s just get comfortable and familiar with them.

Find out how people are finding you

Keyword research


24


Look back over what you’ve done, and repeat the process as needed. Include additional information you get for keyphrases for new areas, and keep working at the process until you have a respectable number of keyphrases with decent amounts of organic traffic.

Step 3 – Review and refine

Use Google Trends to check up on broader time periods and patterns of success for your keyphrases. Are they on the up or downswing? Check any resources you have available, including PPC campaigns you’ve got running. Expensive PPC means expensive organic traffic.

Step 2 – Add information

Check inbound behaviour across all visible metrics, from time on page to conversion rate, and rank them accordingly. Add to your most promising keyphrases using your own knowledge, Ubersuggest and autosuggest, and run them through Google Keyword Planner.

Step 1 – Create a foundation

A no-nonsense three-step guide to keyword research

Starting keyword research


25


“It’s crucial that whoever runs the brainstorming session is inclusive and positive. Write down all ideas that are presented, even if you don’t think they’ll work, and never criticise individuals for their suggestions; you may silence them forever.”

Nick Ellis on brainstorming

It sounds like an oxymoron, but you really do have to prepare people in order to get spontaneous results, or at least spontaneous results you can use. Make sure everyone is working from the same points of reference, that everyone understands the goals, strengths and weaknesses of the plan so far.

If people are at different stages of comprehension, half the brainstorm session will be filled with tedious explanations. Brainstorming has to be quick and efficient, with little error. Long-winded explanations lead to mistakes and misunderstandings, and they definitely don’t help with timing.

Finally, make jokes. At your own expense, if necessary! Jokes are inherently subversive and creative, and will help people to think more freely.

Prepare for spontaneity!

A brainstorming session is easy to get done, but difficult to get right. You’ve got to make sure that all stakeholders are present, that everyone understands the nature of a brainstorm, and that everyone present has successfully internalised

all the available information.

The most important parts of a successful brainstorming session are therefore proper preparation, and getting the right people involved. Involving someone who is, for example, overly negative, can have a really bad effect on the session as a whole and make everyone else reluctant to speak.

On the other hand, involving someone with lots of enthusiasm but little relevant experience or domain knowledge can be just as inhibiting. The input of these people can be valuable, but after the brainstorm.

With a good brainstorming session under your belt, the right answer will leap out at you

Brainstorming ideas



26


Set up the meeting room ahead of time. Make sure there are no interruptions, even switching on computers or searching for pens, so people can just dive straight in. Record everything in an organised mind-map – free mind-map software XMind is useful (pictured above).

Step 3 – Meet and record

Make sure everyone allocates at least half an hour to conduct research and prepare notes. Brainstorms are much more efficient if people prepare on their own, then share what they have, rather than trying to come up with something on the fly.

Step 2 – Prepare materials

Let people know what you’re expecting from the brainstorm. Rough ideas are welcome, and even really bad ideas can spark better ones. Share the plan you have so far, showing what you’re looking for. If necessary, have a preparatory meeting to discuss what you have.

Step 1 – Set expectations

Bring out your team’s creativity but keep it structured

Weather the storm


27


“Away from traditional holiday days, there’s a staggering amount of weird and wonderful celebration and awareness days that you can tie content into. For example, practically every foodstuff has its own dedicated day, week, or even month.”

Nick Ellis on event calendars

Ideally, you won’t just be using these events for your content. You’ll be getting stuck in with the enthusiastic community around the events, probably learning a great deal along the way. At the very least, you should look at how many contacts you can make.

Becoming properly involved with the events and celebrations on your calendar will give you more than traffic, leads, or even conversions. It will help you to achieve all these things at once, on a long-term basis, and simultaneously build your brand and presence in local search.

Get involved

Knowing what’s coming and what’s important in your sector is vital if you’re going to make timely, intelligent, powerful content. For a lot of industries, this will be easy – event organisers actively seek people to engage with their event,

and help spread the word.

For others, the events to build your content around might be a bit more obscure, but take heart – they do exist, no matter how difficult they are to find. From door seal trade shows to National Stilton Week, every obsession, hobby or business has its own dedicated event.

If you really can’t find an appropriate event to put on your calendar, there are certain events that are fairly generally applicable; major holidays, festivals, dates from history great content can be created around all of these.

An event calendar will help you thoroughly plan out all your content for the year ahead

Creating an event calendar


28


When writing out calendars, make everything explicit. It might be obvious to you now that there’s a direct link between the beer festival and your local law firm, but you need to make a note of your thought process, even just to see any mistakes.

A sudden content push is rarely effective. Regular updates improve how search engines see your content, making it appear more fresh, and keep people interested in your site over a longer period of time – generating better quality traffic over a longer period of time.

Trying to connect with any and every event tangentially connected with your business is not a good idea. For one thing, you just won’t have time, and for another the quality of the content produced will suffer significantly. Keep it tightly focussed.

Step 3 – Write it out

Step 2 – Space out events evenly

Step 1 – Identify useful events

Create an event calendar in three easy steps

Creating a calendar


29


“Top influencers are often bloggers, but that’s not always the case. Work out where your buying personas would hang out online first, and then find out who is influential there. There may be a huge community around a discussion forum, for example.”

Estelle Puleston on influencers

You won’t be making your move yet, but you will be planning it. Identify potential targets using tools like Followerwonk, then work out how you will approach them.

Watch the account over time, get a sense of how the account engages with their audience and what genuinely excites them. Once you have an idea, jot it down and prepare to get in touch.

When you create something for an influencer, you need to make sure that it’s either better than or different from the content they’ve shared in the past. If the standard this will require is way too high, consider targeting social media users who are less influential but more easily accessible.

Planning your move

Great content will naturally attract a modest audience over time. To get things moving and achieve some jaw-dropping results, though, you’re going to need to actively promote your content.

There are several ways you can promote your content once it’s completed, which we’ll get to in the promo plan. For social media, however, there’s just one way which you can try to research and put effective promotion into action, and that’s to find influencers and pitch your idea to them.

Influencers exist anywhere discussion exists. They are typically authoritative and smart in addition to being well-connected, so your approach has to have equal authority and intelligence behind it.

Find the movers and shakers in your vertical on social media and beyond

Identifying influencers


30


If a business isn’t your direct competitor, there’s no reason you couldn’t use their social media influence, perhaps in exchange for something they want. The endorsement of a trusted business or business-owner could be very valuable for your brand.

Step 3 – Check out other businesses

Blogs act as anchors for communities. If someone’s running a successful niche blog, chances are good that they’ve got a decent amount of reach into the community around the blog. Offer them something useful, and they may promote your content.

Step 2 – Find prominent bloggers

Followerwonk is an excellent tool with a host of great metrics and indicators to play with. Bear in mind that metrics can be gamed, so trust your own instincts over followerwonk to an extent. With followerwonk, you should be able to identify real influencers.

Step 1 – Use followerwonk

How to find the influencers in your sector

Find your influencers





SEO

A full suite of SEO services that upgrade your site’s organic search performance


32


All the steps you need to take put your plans into action and ensure your campaigns deliver results that will help grow your

audience and build your business

Part Two

Implementation


33


“Feedback from your customer service and sales team are vital in the creation of buying personas. They understand consumer pain points at all stages in the buying process, giving you real insight into their needs.”

Kath Dawson on the buying process

The buying process covers the journey of a consumer from awareness of the product to after the purchase has been made.

Generally the process begins with awareness of need, in which the consumer will require convincing that they are in need of your product. At the next stage, consideration and research, the consumer has greater interest in the product and will be searching for information to assist their decision. The interest step is an expansion on this, except that the focus is on what is special about your brand. Preference is a more active comparison between brands, often looking at value and quality and purchase follows this, converting the consumer’s interest into a transaction.

The final stage, loyalty, is often disregarded as it comes after the purchase has been made, but it is essential in encouraging consumers to return to your brand.

What are the stages of the buying process?

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, consumers will discover your brand at various stages of the buying process. Some may come across your product by accident, whereas others will approach your site with a purchase already

in mind.

By understanding this process you begin to understand your consumer’s frame of mind at the moment of interaction. For each stage of the process, consider questions the customer wants answering and information they may be after. This is likely to vary for each of your target personas, so it is important to contemplate them all.

You need to cater for your target personas at all six stages of the buying process

Understanding the buying process



34


Whilst it’s all very well learning the theory behind the buying process, it only becomes useful once you can understand it through real-life examples. Plot out a few example scenarios and start to link these situations to content that would be useful to the consumer.

Step 3 – Example scenarios

For each persona and stage of the buying process, brainstorm all the questions and issues you can think of that your consumer could have at this point. If you get stuck, think about typical consumer problems that your product, service or brand helps to resolve.

Step 2 – Drafting questions

It’s important not to forget about your personas after you’ve finished mapping them out. Take time to consider how each stage of the buying process might vary for each of your personas and how this would affect the content they need from your site.

Step 1 – Your buying personas

So you now understand the buying process. Here’s how to implement it into your content strategy

How to approach the buying process


35


Kath Dawson on audit mapping“Finding you have a lot of content gaps may prove to be daunting and leave you wondering how on earth you can fill them all. If you’re too time – or resource – poor to embark upon big projects, a series of relevant blog posts may well suffice.”

As with any audit, this task will help you to see what exactly the current content on your site is achieving. It may also bring to light examples of content that are delivering something different than the original purpose they were designed for.

You may or may not already be aware of any gaps you have on your site or buying personas that you are excluding through your content, so it’s imperative to approach this task with an open mind and really consider your personas’ points of view. For example, you may have created a calculator which overlooks one aspect of one of your persona’s socioeconomic background.

What is the purpose of this content audit?

This audit uses a slightly different process to the original one you will have already completed as it aims to show the effectiveness of your content in relation to your buying personas and target audience.

The most efficient way of doing this is to create a table with your personas across the top and the buying process down the side. Ideally, you then want to consider each piece of content on your site and match it to a stage of the buying process. Of course, some content may cover more than one stage of the buying process so it’s possible to put a piece of content in more than one box. Following on from this, think about which of your personas the content is most useful to and fill in the appropriate box.

It’s important to evaluate your content against the buying process to highlight gaps in your site

Mapping your content audit to the buying process



36


The final step will confirm you’ve made the right decision with the related buying stage as well as suggesting if the content is doing its job. Does your content lead your persona further along the buying process? For successful content the answer should be yes.

This step is the one that relates to the buying process. You need to pinpoint the content down to one stage by asking yourself questions about the nature of the content. For example, does it persuade the reader that your company offers the best value?

The first step is to identify the buying persona that would find the content useful, interesting and relevant. To be able to do this you need to have a good understanding of the needs and wants of your personas (note that these are different things).

Step 3 – How they react

Step 2 – What it says

Step 1 – Who it speaks to

The process itself may seem simple, but knowing how to approach your content can be tricky

What to consider with each piece of content


37


Donna Moore on priorisiting content“If you’re struggling to figure out how best to plug your content gaps, it’s wise to revisit your competitor research and take a look at what has worked for other businesses in your niche at particular stages in the buying process.”

Now that you’re aware of the gaps in your content, you can begin to focus your content strategy on making sure these holes become filled, at the same time as developing the faults and weakness of the content you have already outlined.

It’s not always necessary to have every box filled, as some content may overlap across personas or buying stages. However, it is essential that for each persona you are addressing the most significant areas for them and the stages that will result in their advancement along the buying process. Identifying these areas comes back to fully comprehending their needs and wants from your product or service and being able to identify content that is most accessible and appealing to them.

What does this mean for the future?

Once your content audit is complete, the gaps and holes in your content will become clear, but before you make any attempt to tackle these it’s worth looking at your existing content first. Even when boxes seem filled and

therefore complete, it doesn’t necessarily mean that this content is fulfilling its purpose and goals to maximum potential.

Think back to the third and final step on the previous page; the content may loosely relate to one of the stages of the buying process, but that alone won’t be enough. Your content needs to tick all of the boxes for that stage of the process in order to allow for the consumer to progress through the stages.

Now that you’ve done the research, you can start to make plans for development and improvement

Identifying and filling the gaps


38


Work towards a content plan that combines the development you need to complete for your existing content areas and filling the gaps you have identified. Formulating a strong content strategy is likely to result in the whole company working towards the same objectives and goals.

Don’t ignore the boxes that your existing content has filled. Ask yourself if the content is good enough and think about whether it is achieving the results you need it to. If not, take some time to reconsider its purpose and work on improving it.

Attempting to cover every gap in your table and spreading yourself thin across a lot of projects is not an effective way to work. It’s best to prioritise the areas that will bring you the best results swiftly and be most successful among your target consumers.

Step 3 – Combining the two

Step 2 – Prioritising gaps

Step 1 – Existing content

Choosing the gaps to fill that will give consumers the best experience and produce results for your brand

How best to fill the gaps


39


Nick Ellis on strategic planning“The six-month content plan must work in conjunction with the goals of your marketing strategy. If you’re aiming to drive B2B sales, or increase your brand presence in a new country, your content strategy needs to reflect this.”

Whatever the format of your plan, it requires a fresh row for each calendar month in order for you to be able to clearly track a progression. The information in the plan should include: the type of content; a short description to explain what it is; the purpose of the content, such as the related buying persona, stage of buying process and overall goal; the people responsible for creating the content and how long each step ought to take.

As long as this information is available, everyone who works on the project will have a solid understanding of what it should achieve.

What should the plan include?

Your six-month content plan is the document that everyone refers to throughout the project, so it needs to be well thought-out and carefully detailed. As long as the steps are clear and everyone is working off the same page, there is no

reason for your plan not to follow through effectively.

Six months is a suitable length of time for a content plan as it allows you enough time to sufficiently research and develop your content, as well as giving you long-term goals to work towards. Yet six months is also a short enough period after which to review the direction and results of your content so far and form the next plan on the basis of this progress. And, of course, you need some level of flexibility to keep on top of the constantly changing demands of the internet.

Bringing together everything you’ve prepared and learnt so far and formulating a strategic plan

Creating a six-month plan


40


One step people often forget about is planning your staffing carefully. You don’t want to end up in a situation where your content is late because one member of the team has been given too much all at once. This should help form your order. (More on this later.)

Step 3 – Allocate your staff

Next comes the order of the content and what will go best where. Make sure you take into account any seasonal events or periods that may alter the effectiveness of your content as well as how your content fits together and interacts across your website.

Step 2 – Form an order

Make a list of the prioritised content you have come up with and think about the processes that each one will require, including how long it will take to produce, the skills it needs for development and any obstacles you may need to overcome along the way.

Step 1 – List your content

The composition of your six-month plan can’t be rushed, or your content will reflect this

How to form your plan


41


Elisabetta Bruno on writing briefs“A brief is essential to understand what internal stakeholders or your client needs and wants. Its purpose is not to shackle creativity, but to channel it towards the right goal: to produce content that will deliver results.”

There are no hard and fast rules on how to structure a brief, as long as it includes a sufficient level and depth of information. Generally, briefs will need to vary depending on the type of project, the structure of the team working on it and whether it is a design or editorial brief. It’s a good idea to create template briefs for each type of project.

In basic terms a brief needs to include: a description of what the content is about; who the target readers/viewers are and why it will interest them; an outline of how, where and when the content will be promoted; what the content is trying to achieve; some keyword research for optimisation; details about any design of the content and a list of the people who will be involved in producing the content.

What information should a brief contain?

Having a well-prepared brief for each piece of content is just as essential to your content strategy as the six-month plan. It is far too easy for ideas to be misinterpreted and messages to be gradually twisted when there is no

document for everyone to refer back to, and this will always lead to the end result of the content being far from what it was intended to be. In addition to this being frustrating and confusing, it also often results in the content not fulfilling its purpose or not suiting its target audience, which is a waste of time and resources.

Without a detailed brief it’s easy for the content to move away from the original idea

Writing content briefs



42


Once the brief is written, one final precaution can be made to be sure that everyone is working towards the same idea and this is as simple as getting everyone from the content planning meeting to check over the brief before the project is begun.

Step 3 – Final checks

When it comes to writing the brief, it’s essential to find the appropriate balance of detail without it becoming overly complex and difficult to follow. If it is a creative project, a brief sketch of how it should look is useful to keep everyone on track.

Step 2 – Composing the brief

The creation of a brief essentially begins in the content planning meeting with the notes that are made from the decisions that are made for the content. It’s important that the individual who will be writing the brief has a clear image of the content.

Step 1 – Content planning

By following this process you’re ensuring you eliminate any discrepancies within a project or team

The steps to briefing success


43


“Try to ask open-ended questions; if you just ask ‘do you like this?’ and get a lot of ‘nos’, that’s not helpful.Instead, ask how it could be improved. Do they agree with the content? What would make it more beneficial to their readers?”

Estelle Puleston on blogger feedback

In addition to the benefit of getting an outsider’s point of view, getting blogger feedback has other results that can impact greatly on the outcome of your content. To start with, identifying relevant bloggers is a useful task as you can see whether there are people out there who would be likely to share your content and whether your content is specific or broad enough to suit this audience.

For the bloggers who reply and give feedback, you are already beginning to build a relationship with them and they are much more likely to want to share the finished content if you have taken their suggestions into account and if they have had some kind of influence or impact on the final piece of content.

Why is this important?

Whilst projects are in the initial research and creation stages, one way of keeping the focus on who the content is for and its intended results is to get blogger feedback. It’s always too easy to make assumptions about what

it is that your target audience would be interested in and likely to share, but from finding out exactly what they would like you can be sure to iron out any potential weaknesses.

You should aim to contact around 15 bloggers to find out what they think. Of course, you may not hear back from all of them, but generally this is a really rewarding task and can highlight some seemingly-obvious factors you may have missed.

Feedback from potential targets and the people who would share the content can be invaluable

Gaining blogger feedback



44


At this stage careful thought needs to go into who to contact. Of course, if your content has been planned effectively you will know which buying persona is being targeted but bloggers don’t always fall into neat categories and may need to be more or less specific.

Emails to bloggers should have a friendly but approachable tone and it’s essential that you prove you’ve actually read their blog. Think about what kind of input you would like from the bloggers and draft up some questions to ask about the project and content.

Once you have your feedback from the bloggers, any changes to the original plan should be implemented fairly quickly so that developments aren’t being made in the wrong direction. When deliberating bloggers’ ideas, make sure you don’t forget about the importance of the buying process.

Step 3 – Implement ideas

Step 2 – Draft your email

Step 1 – Identify bloggers

It’s time to get blogger feedback for your project, but what exactly should you be doing?

How to approach blogger feedback


You can spend hours and hours creating an amazing piece of content, but without an in-depth promotion plan the content won’t be seen by anyone and therefore won’t achieve the results it has the potential for.

Your promotion plan needs to begin during the creation stage; too often the mistake is made of thinking that the promotion process starts once the content is created. Generally, promotion consists of blogger outreach, social media, PR and your business’s own mediums such as newsletters.

As already discussed, the promotion process begins with finding the bloggers for blogger feedback and then whilst the creation is in progress, more blogger targets should be found to add to this list.

Every project will differ slightly from others in terms of how it should be promoted, so it comes down to deciding where best it will work for the individual project. Firstly, you should consider the social media sites that your target bloggers and audience use most frequently and effectively as this will be where the content is most likely to be shared around.

Your target buying personas need to be a weighty factor when deciding how best to promote, as does the buying process. Think about whether these people are already aware of the brand, or if you are attempting to approach them anew. Where do these targets have an online presence and which types of promotion do you think they will they react positively to?

Writing a promotion planBecause even great content can go nowhere and

achieve nothing without effective promotion

How to know what to promote where

Estelle Puleston on promotion plans“Planning is an essential part of promotion, but your plan shouldn’t be set in stone. Revise it as you discover what’s working best and constantly be on the lookout for new promotion opportunities too. Then put more time into the stuff that gets results.”

45



How to draft a promotion plan

Without a set structure and plan for promotion it’s hard to follow and track the results

Always begin with a time scale and set deadlines and goals for when to promote what. This will make the process a lot easier once the promotion begins as you will be able to keep on top of the campaign and keep track of results.

Within the plan it’s useful to have a list of your targets and the method by which you will be attempting to contact them. Additionally, you need to know where you will be posting the content e.g. via which of the brand’s social media accounts.

The approach you take when promoting content in terms of tone greatly affects the way in which it is received by your target audience. Is it a serious and factual piece? Are you trying to keep it light-hearted? Does it require interaction through social media?

Step 1 – Time scale

Step 2 – Targets and location

Step 3 – Approach

46




Resource allocationMaking sure you have a sufficient spread of

resources for each stage of the content creation

Stephen Lo Gatto on resource allocation“Know the skill set of your team; allocate tasks to resources with the correct skill to complete the task. Work on a priority basis and review them regularly, your team can’t do everything at once. Be realistic about resource availability.”

47


In order to meet all deadlines and targets of a project it’s necessary to plan out resources and people for every task that needs completing, however small the job may seem. Within a company it’s unlikely that the piece of content will be the only

project the team is working on, so it’s important to be aware of the workloads of other team members as well as allocating enough time for the task to be completed to the best abilities of the team.

Setting small deadlines and objectives will help you to see if you are keeping on track, and allow you to make minor adjustments along the way if necessary. It will also prevent the project from being held up because of a bottleneck effect from one area of the development.

It’s a good idea to have one person who oversees the development of the project and can keep the development of content moving. Once you have a deadline for the finished piece of content you can start working backwards and allocating tasks and deadlines to individuals or teams.

Although these tasks are being assigned as separate jobs, it’s important not to lose sight of how each task interlinks with the others, as otherwise the content may become disjointed and inconsistent along the way.

Always allow a bit of extra time in preparation for unplanned obstacles and issues that could arise during the creation stages. It’s much better to be ahead of schedule.

Factors to consider



48

Step 2 – Fill in the gaps

Once all these principal deadlines are in place, you can start to fill in the smaller jobs and tasks. Make sure to keep in mind the progression of tasks and which tasks heavily influence others, so as to assign the tasks in the correct order.

Step 3 – Check for issues

Check with the individuals that the deadlines you have set are achievable. If not, it may be best to allocate the task to someone else, or have a reshuffle of the deadlines. It’s better to face these issues now rather than further down the line.

Working backwards from the completion date will make it much easier when trying to decide how long to assign to each task. Start by setting the big goals such as when the content should be written and when the first draft should be ready.

Step 1 – Start at the finish

What is the best approach to take when starting to create the plan and set deadlines?

How to effectively allocate resources



49


Stephen Lo Gatto on project creation“Be clear what the project is required to deliver. Invest time in planning the project; plan for success not failure. Have a project kick off and set expectations for successful delivery. Review progress regularly as issues will always crop up.”

Agencies have the extra responsibility of involving the client throughout the process. To begin with, the client needs to understand the purpose of the content and why it is being created. Before the content can go into creation, the client will need to agree to the finish date as this will be affected by when they can publish the content.

The approval of the client is necessary at each stage and they have the right to ask you to change things at any point. This is another reason why it’s important to factor in extra time to deal with problems that may arise along the way.

Ultimately, you have to work at the client’s pace and if something is held up at their end there’s nothing you can do except adapt the plan and make the best out of the situation.

And what if you’re an agency?

Now that all the planning and preparation has been done, everything should be in place and you’re ready to start creating. However, even with the most rigorous plan in place, the project won’t run itself, which is why it’s vital to

have a project manager to ensure that everyone is doing their part, running to deadlines and sticking to the brief.

It is the project manager’s duty to keep the project running to plan, but they must also have the authority to be able to adapt stages the of plan if something isn’t working quite as well as was hoped.

If all of the previous stages have been implemented successfully, this should run reasonably smoothly

Project creation



50


If the team is prepared to be flexible and work around any possible obstacles and unseen issues, the project has a much higher chance of success. This is when the extra time you factored in comes in handy and allows you time to be flexible.

Step 3 – Flexibility

Showing the client or internal stakeholders and getting their approval at each stage is much more effective than just revealing the finished content at the end. It is much easier and requires less resources to change things while the content is still in progress.

Step 2 – Client involvement

Before anything can start, the project manager needs to make sure everything is in place and prepared for the project. Nothing should happen (or not happen) during the creation without the project manager being aware and keeping a record of the completion of each section.

Step 1 – Project management

It’s not possible to foresee every hiccup, but you can be prepared to deal with them

How to ensure the creation runs smoothly


The publication of your content is equally important as the initial research and actual creation, as the time and location of its publication influences how many people will view the content and what kinds of people these will be. Being too

focused on the creation of the content and ignoring the publication until the last minute is a common mistake and often leads to significant delays in the campaign.

The timing of publication is possibly the first factor that should be considered, as this affects the timescale for the whole development and creation of the content. Additionally, your content may relate to a seasonal period or event so this needs careful consideration.

One of the biggest decisions that needs to be made is where to publish the content. Is it going to be a microsite? Or will it sit on a standalone page on your website? It could be as simple as being included in the company’s onsite blog. Ideally, it wants to be in a place that’s easily accessible for the target bloggers and somewhere that the target buying personas are likely to come across it naturally.

Finally, it’s advisable to consider any technical issues to do with the content and its location, and whether you have the skills and resources to implement the content. If you’re an agency you will need to check that the client is able to comply with the technical requirements.

Publishing the contentIf the location of your published content isn’t spot

on, it can dramatically reduce its success

What to think about when publishing content

Donna Moore on publishing content“Don’t create wonderful content then hide it away. Make sure there are meaningful links to it from relevant areas of the site, such as your company blog or relevant sales pages; you could even create banners to promote your masterpiece.”

51



How to guarantee content will be published on time

Here are the steps to take to avoid complications with the publishing of your completed content

The date of publication and where the content will be published should be set well before creation gets underway. If you have your buying persona and the buying process in mind then the place of publication will be a significant part of the strategy.

Before progressing with the creation of the content it’s essential to check that you are going to be able to publish the content on the site, whether it’s because of technical issues or because the relevant team has more pressing issues to attend to.

If there is a very specific date or time that the content should be published in order to reach maximum potential then you need to make sure the content is completed in time to allow the relevant team a reasonable amount of time to publish it.

Step 1 – Be prepared

Step 2 – Confirm with client

Step 3 – Allow for delays

52



53


“If you think your content may appeal to a newspaper – for example you’ve conducted a survey and the results make for an interesting story – then don’t be afraid to approach journalists in that field; offering them a story makes their life easier!”

Becky Martin-Jones on promotion

Successful promotion heavily relies on how well you have been running social media accounts up to this point; if you already have a strong social presence your promotion is much more likely to be successful. Make sure you’re covering the right platforms, which means having an awareness of where your target bloggers and personas exist.

This goes hand in hand with updating your profiles regularly, not just when you have content to promote. You are a much more trustworthy source when frequently posting relevant things on social media, and conversing with your targets and customers heightens this reliability.

More technical aspects include employing appropriate and effective hashtags and equivalent features, as well as encouraging people to share your content by having social sharing buttons on the page with your content.

On sites such as Twitter and Facebook it’s important not to make your posts too text-heavy. Including images is more likely to attract browsers’ attention, in addition to the fact that posts with images take up more space and so occupy more of your targets’ screens.

Essential promotional techniques

At this point in your project you should already have developed your promotional plan, in which case the promotion will be fairly straightforward to implement and follow up. However, you cannot assume that the process you

have planned will definitely be successful and achieve the results you want, which is why it’s so beneficial to be flexible and be prepared to make changes along the way.

Now that the content is finished and published, it’s time to start on the promotion plan

Promoting the content


How to ensure the promotion plan is effective

It’s not always enough to follow your plan, you may have to make adjustments en route

Providing that you have a promotional plan in place, you can begin by simply implementing the procedures you have already scheduled. This is why it’s a good idea to have written your promotion plan in a lot of detail, with specific and time-based steps.

However well you have planned your promotion, there will always be certain things that don’t go as well as hoped. Set a date to evaluate the success of your promotion so far, whether you chose this to be days or weeks after the launch date.

Once you have identified the strategies that haven’t quite worked you can revise the remainder of the promotion plan and make any necessary adjustments. It could be something as simple as the frequency of sharing, but it may take more work and consideration than that.

Step 1 – Promotion plan

Step 2 – Evaluation

Step 3 – Adjustments

54



55


Donna Moore on measuring success“One of the criticisms levelled at content marketing is that it’s difficult to measure a return on investment, and that it also takes time to have a significant impact on business. If you’re in any doubts about its effectiveness, flick forward to our case studies.”

The results you will want to record will depend completely on the type of content you have produced, who the content was for and which stage of the buying process it relates to. For example, if your content was created to support the purchase stage then you will want to look at the conversion rates of the page to see if your content had succeeded in encouraging consumers to purchase your product. Alternatively, although social shares are usually one of the principal methods of measuring success, there would be no point counting social shares if your target audience were aged 60 plus, for example.

Generally, things to look out for are the number of visits to the page, the time spent on the page, conversion rates, the number of downloads (where relevant), inbound links and social shares (and on which sites). Of course, there are plenty more factors that will be specific to the content, such as the number of clicks made on a dynamic infographic, which will tell you if people are interacting with the graphic.

Measurable results

No matter how much research and development you put into creating your content, there’s always a chance that you won’t get the results you worked for, due to the unpredictable nature of the internet. However, if you measure every

factor you can you may be able to determine reasons as to why the content hasn’t delivered, as well as highlighting the aspects that really worked well.

It’s important to measure the success of content in order to work out what performs well

Measuring success


56


Once you’ve identified the areas in which the content hasn’t delivered, attempt to come up with reasons as to why it might not have succeeded. For example, if the content hasn’t generated enough social shares, could this be because the sharing buttons weren’t very obvious?

Step 3 – Analysis

Next it’s important to determine which data is relevant for measuring the success of the content. Think about the purpose of the content and who the target audience is. Are they present on any social media sites? Is the content supposed to encourage a purchase?

Step 2 – Relevancy

There are a number of different tools and sites you can use to find the data you need. Information such as social shares will be evident from the site or social profile, but Analytics will be more useful for the data you can’t collect yourself.

Step 1 – Collecting data

Measuring the success of your content will help to form developments and changes for future campaigns

The best way to measure success


57


Reflecting on resultsNow that you have gathered your results, reflect on

the whole process from start to finish

Kath Dawson on evaluating results“There will always be teething troubles when introducing new concepts and processes. As we’ve developed our content production here at Strategy we’ve learned a lot through mistakes. Our advice is: be prepared to fail and keep refining. It’s worth it.’

Even for those projects that have been really successful and delivered brilliant results, it is always worth reflecting on the process. It’s unlikely that every single step of the way was perfectly executed with no hiccups, and even if the

whole process did run smoothly, it’s beneficial to make note of procedures that work particularly well.

For projects that didn’t go as planned, think about what you could do during future projects to prevent the same thing from happening again. If your content wasn’t successful but there were no apparent issues or problems along the way, you may need to think back to the research and planning stages.

It’s important to consult the whole team when reflecting on the project, as individuals may have experienced problems that others weren’t aware of or have suggestions for improvements that others haven’t considered. A group discussion is an effective way of reflecting on the project, as the whole team can work together to find solutions to the issues that arose.

As well as reflecting on the project as a whole, asking individuals to reflect on their segment of the work is highly beneficial as you will start to see an improvement in the way that the progression of projects works. Once people begin to hear about others’ obstacles they may realise that there are ways in which they can adapt their own methods in order to make the process run more smoothly between stages.

Getting the whole team involved


How to structure your reflection

Thinking through the process in a structured manner will ensure that nothing is overlooked or forgotten

The research and planning stages are often disregarded when it comes to evaluating the success, but there are many aspects that could have gone wrong. For example, you may have missed out a significant research area, or failed to target the right influencers and bloggers.

During the creation, issues that occurred are usually fairly obvious, but there may be phases you haven’t considered. Did the progression of stages run smoothly? Was the system of communication within the team suitably efficient? How well was the initial brief followed?

As with all of the stages, it’s important to note down what worked well in relation to what didn’t, otherwise you risk losing focus on these essential steps when it comes to the next project. Which approaches and techniques generated positive responses on social media?

Step 1 – Research and planning

Step 2 – The creation

Step 3 – Promotion

58



59


“Treating your plan as set in stone is fraught with risk. There are many reasons why you may need to adapt, such as seismic shifts within your industry or company, or a fresh opportunity that presents itself but requires resources to be acted on. Be flexible.”

Holly Hayman on adapting the plan

You may even want to revise the structure of your six-month plan as a document at the end of your project. If there were confusions along the way it might be beneficial to add in columns of extra information. It’s possible that important steps were missed out because they weren’t included in the document, in which case you will want to make a note on the template to add this information in the future.

It could even be a case of the process of the developing the plan. Perhaps you want more of the team involved in the development of the plan, to revise the plan after three months or start the planning earlier on. Make sure to collate the opinions of the team too. What did they find useful to have in the six-month plan, and what might have made the process easier or more effective?

Changes to the structure of the plan

At the end of the reflection period you should think about how the improvements you’ve come up with can be implemented into the six-month plan for projects to come. The six-month plan is the document that forms the

progression of the project from start to finish so it is essential to revise its usage at the end of every project. There is no right or wrong way to implement a six-month plan, which is why it’s important to begin to tailor it to best suit your team and style of working.

A project doesn’t end with the results; everything you’ve learnt is fed into the next project

Adapting the plan


60


If you’ve got another project beginning then you can implement these changes into the plan right away and start to feed in the new and improved processes as you go. If not, be sure to make alterations to the template document of your six-month plan.

Step 3 – Make changes

Next you can consider each problem that arose and see if they were caused by or can be solved by the six-month plan. Although many issues won’t be directly related, there may be steps you can add in to prevent them from happening next time.

Step 2 – Relate to plan

Step 1 – Identify problems

The first step relates back to the reflection stage, as you need to generate a clear list of any issues from the project stages. Make sure these problems are as precise as possible, e.g. not just ‘promotion didn’t work’ but ‘need more specific Twitter targets’.

What’s the approach to take when addressing the six-month plan and deciding where to make alterations?

Where to take the six-month plan





PPC

Spend less for a greater ROI with PPC strategies that boost reach and retain relevancy


62


B2C and B2B content marketing success stories for each stage of the buying process, why they worked, and how your business can

learn from them

Case Studies

Part Three



63

thomsonlocalthomsonlocal drew in its target customers – small business owners – by creating a series of in-depth

business guides

B2B Awareness




64

What was the content and why was It successful?

The thomsonlocal ‘Resources to Support Small Businesses’ hub works because of the sheer breadth of content included – each guide is split into categories with links to articles, videos and other useful resources for each – whilst still being easy to navigate thanks to the attractive, dynamic design.

This ensures that no matter what questions users may have about launching a small business, they can easily find an answer here. thomsonlocal comes across as a leading expert in the area of small business, and by including industry-specific guides they capture in particular the attention of businesses who are their main target customers.

Although much of the content linked to in the guide is thomsonlocal’s own, they are not using this resource to openly advertise their services. This means authoritative websites, such as the business pages of council websites, have viewed it as a genuinely helpful piece of content that they are happy to link to.

Why it worked

The stats

Thomsonlocal’s collection of resources for small businesses covers everything from sourcing funding to dealing with employees, and includes in-depth guides on key local industries such as electrician and plumbing businesses.

Presented as a series of interactive guides, this relatively new content has already drawn in tens of links from highly-reputable websites such as local councils and universities, and the general business startup guide alone has been shared across social media over 400 times.

thomsonlocal presented itself as a leader in the field of helping small businesses achieve success



65

Melbourne MetroMelbourne Metro created a railway safety campaign unlike any other with animation ‘Dumb Ways to Die’

B2C Awareness




66

the book title

What was the content and why was it successful?

The campaign was so successful because it is humorous, relatable to the majority of consumers and is therefore of a shareable nature. The video was an instant viral hit and has received over 68 million views. Once the characters became recognisable, a series of print ads were released and a simple image of one of the characters was all that was needed for consumers to identify the posters with the Metro.

This campaign ties in with the awareness of need stage of the buying process; the video doesn’t promote the Metro as a service or allude in any way to ticket sales, but raises brand awareness and conveys the company as one that really cares about the safety of its customers.

Why it worked

The stats

Melbourne Australia’s Metro system chose to step away from more traditional forms of railway safety advertising when they launched an animated video entitled ‘Dumb Ways to Die’. The video shows a series of animated characters

as they engage in stupidly dangerous activities that consequently lead to their deaths, whilst the growing collection of deceased characters sing along in rhyme. The ridiculous deaths vary from poking a bear with a stick to taking your helmet off in space, and finish with the more relevant train-related deaths.

Melbourne Metro created a game for Apple and Android devices based on the situations from the video and set up displays by which customers could take their photo and ‘solemnly swear to be safe around trains’.

Melbourne Metro’s video and the supporting app have been viral hits because of their comic nature



67

AmbiusAmbius created an FAQ-style guide that answered many

potential questions customers may have about their product

B2B Consideration & Awareness




68


Similar to an FAQ section, the guide answers almost every question a potential customer may have. This shows that Ambius understand the needs and concerns their clients may have, and by answering these questions publicly (as opposed to via telephone or email) shows a level of transparency that instils trust.

However, unlike the typical FAQ format, this guide includes a lot of visual content which makes it eye-catching and engaging as well as purely informational, which has led to links from other websites.

The visual content and clear social media sharing buttons also make this content highly shareable – it has so far been shared 150 times.

Why it worked

The stats

Ambius sells a relatively unique product – living green wall installations for offices and commercial spaces – so potential customers understandably have a lot of questions about the benefits and technicalities of the product.

To answer them, Ambius created an ‘ultimate guide to green walls’, laying out commonly-asked questions with clear, in-depth answers including video content.

Ambius removed one of the biggest barriers to conversions – a lack of understanding of the product



69


The Home Depot engaged with consumers by establishing a collection of useful and relevant DIY videos

B2C Consideration & Research

The Home Depot


70



The stats

Why it workedYouTube videos are extremely shareable, making it easy for content to be spread via social media or embedded onto other sites. In addition, The Home Depot often create videos as a series, which encourages viewers to return to the page.

Video tutorials are successful in the DIY industry as the types of people who undertake such projects tend to be more visual learners and it is far easier to understand such processes through a video clip, rather than a block of text.

With hundreds of videos and almost 50,000 subscribers, The Home Depot’s YouTube channel is an integral part of their content marketing strategy. The ‘how-to’ videos are targeted at their typical consumers and aim to answer

dilemmas their potential customers are faced with and would consequently be searching for – from painting walls to plumbing work.

The Home Depot additionally tailors their videos to seasonal events such as Christmas and weather-related issues such as summer gardening.

The Home Depot’s videos portray the brand as a reliable source and leader in its field


71


MailChimp created a summary of all their key statistics – both from a business perspective and a purely-for-fun

perspective – for their About Us section

MailChimp

B2B Interest


72



The stats

If a potential client wants to find out more about your brand, one of the first places they will look for is your ‘about us’ section. You need to show them that you can offer them a great product or service, but also that you as a company are unique.

MailChimp’s annual report is the perfect combination of compelling statistics that persuade users that MailChimp is right for them (such as that they only had 2.98 hours of downtime in 2013) and fun, engaging statistics that show off the personality behind the brand. Users will keep scrolling to read these interesting titbits, all the way taking in facts about how brilliant MailChimp’s service is.

Including links to relevant product pages also helps to drive traffic to these pages and encourage conversions, such as linking to their ‘SMS alerts for events’ product where they mention that they ran 836 events in 2013.

Finally, having a slick, user-friendly design doesn’t hurt either as it hints at the fact that you’ll be able to create equally polished-looking newsletters using MailChimp.

Why it worked

As part of their ‘about us’ section, newsletter service provider MailChimp creates an ‘annual report’ that contains stats and figures about everything from the number of newsletters sent through MailChimp to the number of employees

who had babies that year.

The report is a simple parallax-scrolling design with interesting images placed behind the statistics, and a handful of the statistics link through to relevant pages on their website and social media.

MailChimp persuaded new users to sign up by showing off the personality behind their brand


73


B2C Interest

Liberty Mutual launched a microsite in order to boost customer interaction and conversation with the brand

Liberty Mutual


74

The stats



Why it workedLiberty Mutual’s microsite has been extremely successful due to the fact that it encourages customers to engage in conversation with the brand and begin to develop a relationship.

The blog-like aspect of the site motivates consumers to return to the site and not just make a one-time visit. This gives Liberty Mutual an expanding and captive audience – invaluable to future marketing campaigns or features for the brand.

The insurance company’s content strategy relates to the interest step of the buying process; Liberty Mutual show their target audience what’s different about their corporation and are building trust with their customers by proving that they care about the world and therefore the customers themselves.

Sections of Liberty Mutual’s microsite are directly related to areas of their business, for example ‘driving’, which promotes the company as a thought-leader in that field and conveys their passion for the business.

Global insurance company Liberty Mutual’s strategy involved a microsite named ‘the Responsibility Project’, which is based on the concept of ‘what it means to do the right thing’. The site is a combination of blog posts, polls and videos

that tackle issues such as education, business, ethics and home life.

Customers are encouraged to join debates on issues like freedom of speech and racial discrimination by commenting on articles as well as answering polls and connecting with Facebook. Liberty Mutual’s microsite also features a section of inspiring stories of organisations that are taking responsibility over global issues.

Liberty Mutual’s microsite conveys the brand as one that cares about the world and moral issues



75

BuzzstreamBuzzstream gives all users a free 14-day trial of its

product, as well as showing them exactly what they’ll be getting through a demonstration video

B2B Preference




76


By combining a clear, video demonstration with a free trial, Buzzstream appeals to both types of prospective customer – those who simply want to know what they are buying (the video demonstration) and those who prefer to actually try before they buy (the free trial).

Both of these features are clearly advertised on the homepage – in fact, they form the focal point of the page – as well as in multiple other places on the website.

Buzzstream are being transparent about what users will get when they sign up, which instils trust. Combined with a single-page sign-up process that takes just a minute to complete and get started, the company removes any reservations that a business owner or agency may have about trying their service.

The ongoing support and the content Buzzstream provides to help users make the most of their product keep trial users engaged. “Historically, there’s been a very strong correlation between [trial engagement] and retention” says Paul May, CEO and co-founder of Buzzstream. “We almost always see 60% to 70% of trials convert to paid accounts.”

Why it worked

The stats

BBuzzstream provides a service for business owners and agencies to help with every aspect of link-building, from finding opportunities through to reporting.

They offer prospective customers a free 14-day trial of any of their four pricing packages, as well as having a video ‘tour’ on their website that demonstrates exactly how to use the tool and what the interface will look like once you sign up and log in.

Buzzstream showed they had nothing to hide by letting users sign up to ‘try before they buy’



77


Fast-food company Chipotle created an animated video advert and supporting mobile app that quickly went viral

Chipotle

B2C Preference


78



Why it workedChipotle employed the ever-successful technique of storytelling, which allows the audience to be consumed by the tale and forget about the commercial element of the advert.

Furthermore, Chipotle’s story is emotive and likely to affect even those who had no previous concern for the sustainability of their food. There is a disjointed irony in the lyrics of the song, ‘if you want to view paradise, take a look around and view it’, in comparison to the melancholic tone of the music and the story itself.

The video fits into the preference stage of the buying process, as it offers a direct comparison between Chipotle and other fast-food chains.

Mexican fast-food company Chipotle launched a video, The Scarecrow, which follows a scarecrow working in the fast-food industry in a dystopian world of the future. As the scarecrow moves around this world he looks sadly upon all

the discoveries he finds, before returning to his home where he grows his own fresh produce. The video finishes with him establishing a fast-food stand in the city with a banner stating ‘cultivate a better world’.

On top of the video, which has reached over 10 million views, Chipotle created an app. The game is marketed as ‘a quest for wholesome, sustainable food’ and has received over 400,000 downloads.

This campaign of Chipotle’s ties in with the brand’s Cultivate Foundation, which supports sustainable agriculture and family farming.

Chipotle’s use of clever storytelling and high-quality animation led to the ad’s 10 million YouTube views

The stats


79


Vistaprint simplified its complex pricing structure by adding an instant quote calculator to all of its product

ranges

Vistaprint

B2B Purchase


80



The stats

Without the instant quote calculator, users would need to do the maths themselves or complete the somewhat lengthy online customisation process to be presented with a final cost. By instead offering an instant quote with a clear ‘Order Now’ button for those happy with the price, Vistaprint removes two major barriers to conversions – a long checkout process, and uncertainty over cost.

Vistaprint gains the confidence and trust of users by providing transparent pricing, and underneath the quote the user is reminded of the options that they have selected so there is no doubt about what they are buying.

Why it worked

Vistaprint specialise in printed marketing materials for small businesses. Nearly all of their products, from business cards to flyers, are highly customisable with many optional additions, as well as different pricing levels depending on the

quantity bought.

Vistaprint offers an ‘instant quote’ calculator that lets users see exactly how much their option choices will cost them in seconds.

With 83 websites linking to Vistaprint’s business cards page alone and a revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s obvious that Vistaprint’s clear pricing and easy-to-use website has made them a market leader in their industry.

Vistaprint dramatically shortened the time and effort needed for users to get an exact quote


81


B2C Purchase

Mr PorterMen’s fashion retailer Mr Porter launched an online

journal to increase consumer engagement with the brand


82


The stats


Why it workedAs a fashion retailer it is essential to be regarded as being at the forefront of the industry and on top of the latest trends and Mr Porter’s the Journal establishes the brand as a definite trend setter and somewhere that readers can come for fashion-related inspiration.

In any industry, featuring celebrities, experts or other role models will attract attention from target audiences, and so giving readers the chance to replicate celebrity outfits is an extremely successful marketing technique.

Additionally, as the Journal is updated on a weekly basis, it gives Mr Porter’s target audience a reason to return to the site and build a relationship with the brand.

The ‘shop the story’ function relates directly to the purchase stage of the buying process and converts potential customers into definite purchases, without it feeling like a hard sell or obvious marketing ploy.

Mr Porter is an online retail company selling men’s fashion from high-end designer brands. The clothing company’s online content marketing comes in the form of ‘the Journal’, which is an area of their site that is updated weekly

with interviews, articles and celebrity looks.

What’s unique about Mr Porter’s content strategy is the ‘shop the story’ function. At the bottom of each relevant article and feature there is a ‘shop the story button’ that takes the reader to the appropriate product page for the clothing or accessories mentioned in the article, allowing the customer to purchase the item at ease.

Mr Porter’s journal and ‘shop the story’ function act as a conversion tool for the brand



83

XeroxXerox engaged customers by creating a series

of industry magazines

B2B Loyalty




84


Xerox claims to help businesses operate more efficiently and effectively, so by creating a magazine full of tips on just how to do this they were providing evidence to back up their claim and showcasing themselves as an industry leader.

Part of the success of the campaign was down to teaming up with a very well-known and influential publisher, Forbes, which lent instant weight and authority to a brand new magazine that could otherwise have taken months or years to build up the same credibility.

The Chief Optimist magazine series – which businesses can subscribe to receive when they sign up for a scheduled appointment – keeps businesses engaged and interacting on some level with the Xerox brand even after they have made a purchase, encouraging brand loyalty.

Why it worked

The stats

Xerox specialise in providing printing products and services and outsourced IT to businesses. They teamed up with Forbes to create a series of industry-specific magazines titled Chief Optimist that are all about “seeing (and seizing)

opportunities others may miss”.

The campaign led to over 20,000 new email contacts, over 1,000 new appointments with businesses wanting to discuss how Xerox could benefit them, and, ultimately, generated $1.3billion additional revenue. (Source)

Xerox generated $1.3billion by creating a series of magazines that appealed to their target market



http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/05/11-examples-killer-b2b-content-marketing/

85


‘My Starbucks Idea’ has created an online community that creates a bridge between brand and customer

Starbucks

B2C Loyalty


86


The stats

Why it worked


My Starbucks Idea has now received over 150,000 ideas and launched countless new products and features because of it. The site relates to the loyalty stage of the buying process as it is in place to support and reward existing customers and encourage them to continue supporting the brand, and the ‘ideas in action’ feature proves that the brand listens to its customers.

My Starbucks Idea has been in place for over five years and is the perfect example of a successful piece of evergreen content. Consumers will always have ideas and improvements for the brand that encourage them to return to the site, and the leaderboard and ‘question of the day’ elements are further reasons for customers to visit more frequently.

Starbucks successfully created an online community with their site My Starbucks Idea, which allows people to leave their suggestions and improvements. Consumers are encouraged to submit their comments, which are then split into

‘product ideas’, ‘experience ideas’ and involvement ideas’. Suggestions range from new flavours of coffee to rewards and loyalty systems.

All comments submitted to the website are then viewable to anyone and visitors can vote for their favourite ideas. Similarly, there is an ‘ideas in action’ area, which lists the projects in discussion or schemes that have already been enforced thanks to a customer suggestion. The ‘Question of the Day’ poll offers consumers yet another way to engage with the brand and have influence over the company’s future.

Starbucks’ microsite allows the brand to interact with customers, showing they value their opinions


www.strategydigital.co.uk
