Content Marketing

Defining Content Marketing:

Content marketing is an important aspect of today’s business world. It is everywhere and has been creating a lot of noise, however there is confusion surrounding content marketing. A simple definition of content marketing is, “the process of creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your audience” (Rothman, 2015). By implementing content marketing, you are allowing your company to be visible and enabling you to be heard. The qualifications for content marketing include, engaging and interacting with the customers, a story should also be told, including how does the content fix in your channels, and changing it when needed (Rothman, 2015). As well, a specific purpose, ensure you have goals prior, think about how the content should last, trying to make it last longer (Rothman, 2015).

When creating a marketing strategy for content marketing, always ensure it works for your business and industry. Though Content Marketing costs money, you are creating your own ideas in your business. Therefore, it’s different than participating in a Trade show, as you essentially “owning your own attention” (Rothman, 2015).  This can be explained because you create your content, you create own attention to your own brand, therefore, creating your own attention. Overall this strategy costs less money and has a longer life (Rothman, 2015).

Your content should be developed using thought leadership. This practice is used in content marketing, as it educates your customer and uses your best practices, encouraging them to buy your product. Overall your content marketing should include a mix of thought leadership, sales content, and education assets (Rothman, 2015). I have been told that thought leadership can entice and draw in customers, especially new buyers.  This does not push them, but ensure they have a reason to return back to your company (Rothman, 2015).

Foundations for Content Marketing

One important aspect of creating content marketing is assembling a successful team. This is the base foundation, as they will be creating your content marketing. First recognize your internal team, the managing editor will play an important role in content marketing and may require additional skills to fully prepare for the role (Rothman, 2015). An associate editor should also be placed on the team. This position creates content, edits, manages the projects, coordinates all team members, and manages your blog (Rothman, 2015). If your company is unable to financially support this, they should look at adding them in the future.

It can be hard to recruit an internal team. Rothman and I suggest looking at LinkedIn, former journalist, referrals, Twitter networks, and reaching out to content marketers from other companies (Rothman, 2015). You should also involve employee contributions, as you may need help from specific areas with detailed information. You can also look externally, for example, independent writing contractors that can help ensure you reach your goals.

Marketing strategies for content marketing will only work if the content organization is structured (Rothman, 2015). Therefore, the content should be neutral, allowing alignment with the organization. Encouraging everyone to openly speak and contribute ideas that will help it realign with the brand. Rothman recommends using the Content Service bureau Model (Rothman, 2015). Which creates a roadmap, support any requests from the team, the creation process for content, allowing a consistency (Rothman, 2015). This overall helps with the demand for content, searching through customer content, and knowing brand content (Rothman, 2015).

Overall your content team should include Content Committee, Content Service Bureau, your managing editor, associate editor, and then the writers (Rothman, 2015).  However, the team is just the beginning for your content marketing to be successful. You must be able to create a buyer’s persona, which helps them along with their journey (Rothman, 2015). It is important to highlight and address that your buyers may have different personas and journeys through purchasing your product. Therefore, your content must be “relevant and effective” (Rothman, 2015). There are different stages, therefore, the team must do their research on the buyers. Through incorporating your sales team, you will be able to find the important information that will ensure your looks at every stage of the buying process.

Consistency is important; therefore, you need to develop and incorporate your brand voice. It will allow you to be heard and stand out among the competition. Your voice should speak to your organization and incorporate its values.  You also need to create a brand voice tone, language, and style. The most important thing is that the voice of your content should stay consistent and relevant to each persona (Rothman, 2015).

I always believe in setting goals first; this also applies to content marketing. This goal should be measurable and define your success. Goals help keep you on track and ensure you have created proper content (Rothman, 2015). In making goals Rothman mentions meeting with Stakeholders, to obtain their views in relation to the goals (Rothman, 2015). As well I believe it important to check in with your self and ensure your content is on the right track. In addition, set qualitative and quantitative goals (Rothman, 2015).

Make sure all the information is down and then create your plan. Rothman suggests doing research and choosing a content technology platform that would help better your content (Rothman, 2015). These programs help you organize, communicate, and track your content project progress. Before choosing a content project management process, you should assess your situation at work, the content, who’s approval needed, workflow, and the free trials within the technology (Rothman, 2015). When choosing a platform, you must train your whole team this includes external and internal team members.

Creating the Content Plan

Brainstorming your ideas prior to writing your content is crucial, as it allows you to build content arcs. When writing you should always keep in mind the persona and who’s the buyer. A quick search engine is always a good starting point, so you can ensure your company will come up with keywords. As you want to beat your competitors, therefore, you also want to know what they are saying (Rothman,2015). Keeping up with them on social media is a good place to start. It’s also important to be knowledgeable about your company and what they want in the content (Rothman, 2015). Therefore, you should also include your stakeholder, fellow employee, and social media in this step, as it will help your brainstorming. Content arcs are created from brainstorming, and theme for “monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly, or yearly” (Rothman, 2015). 

After understanding the buyer’s journey, creating a content theme, and brainstorming ideas, you should “map your content to your sales funnel” (Rothman, 2015). Sales funnel helps you take a new buyer and transfer them into returning customers. Therefore, you must go through the appropriate steps of sales funnel to ensure this is the end result. In addition, Rothman and I both believe that you should have a content mix and must choose a content type that closely reflects your brand (Rothman, 2015). A blog is a good example, as they have been on a variety of topics, simple, and have valuable information.

Next is planning your editorial calendar, you should think about the content mix you’ve created. This editorial calendar ensures your whole company knows what’s being created and the timeline. The calendar should be accessible for the “marketing, sales, customer service, executives, and anybody who wants to know the content you’re creating” (Rothman, 2015). 

Creating the Content:

Writing content should be done in a repeatable process to help with its difficulty (Rothman, 2015). You should begin with finding an expert within the organization, then create an outline, afterward, you’re ready to write your draft (Rothman, 2015). I have always been taught that a thesis must be clear and concise, this applied to content marketing as well. It ensures the customer knows exactly what you are saying.  Rothman and I both recommend using bullet points so it’s easy for your customers to scan and retrieve information (Rothman, 2015).

Always edit your own drafts and have another review it as well, as I find they will identify more mistakes than you. After that write a second one and edit your final draft. Once that is complete you are able to send it to design (Rothman, 2015). Design helps the content become visual, which is crucial in todays market. In the content design it should have the brand color, the title clearly stated, and relatable images (Rothman, 2015). Once again edit, review the design to ensure the content it fully complete, then you are almost ready to go.

Sometimes creating content is difficult, therefore teams can curate content. Its less money and less time, content marketing can also be done through the “turkey dinner analogy” (Rothman, 2015). In which the team creates large pieces of information and dice into smaller portions, giving you more content (Rothman, 2015).

Promoting Content:

For promoting content, you must determine the Gating Strategy (Rothman, 2015). This is the process of placing a form in front of your content in order to gather lead contact information (Rothman, 2015). There are different options to gating which include gating all your content, none of your content, or gating on buying stages (Rothman, 2015). I prefer the second option as it eliminates the barrier and does not make people submit their information. It’s helpful in the early stages as it encourages education among buyers.

Prior to promoting the content, you need to outline the strategy you plan on using. Because once it is published it must be promoted through numerous channels. Rothman recommends sitting down with the stakeholder, outlining a promotional plan then promoting the content (Rothman, 2105).  By going through the steps of the strategy you ensure that you are maximizing your exposure.

The website is the most crucial aspect of promoting your content, and it can be in different areas on your site. For example, it can be on the homepage, on ads, or in the resource section. Wherever you choose, however, you should always promote on social media. Here are a few points you should remember for social media, don’t be afraid to pay to increase your presence, add valuable content, and always create strong calls to actions (Rothman, 2015). Most importantly always try to engage the audience.

Another good way is to promote through email and blogging. It helps send information to a new and current customer, keeping their attention. This information overall focuses on promoting your content (Rothman, 2015). Other ways include syndicating your content to third-party sites; leveraging influencer marketing (Rothman, 2015). This can help you create a relationship with an influencer that is in your industry.  The last option is the pay-per-click ad, however, this can be effective, but expensive.

Defining the measurement of your content: 

Prior to measuring your content, you must define your goals. This must be done before the content is created; therefore, it can be properly measured. This allows you to view how your content is performing (Rothman, 2015). After your goals, you must begin tracking the early stage metrics (Rothman, 2015). Through tracking, you can see where people are going, how often they download, read, and shares on social media (Rothman, 2015). These are important to monitor and track in relation to content marketing.

For tracking revenue impact, you must monitor “Mid- and Late-Stage metrics” (Rothman, 2015).  These metrics are used to prove revenue and show the investment of your business. It is pivotal you track these, as you can show others your growth within your industry and the business as a whole.

Conclusion:

When thinking of examples, the company that comes to my mind is called Buffer. They use guest blogging and publish content on highly visible sites. This capture customers attention bringing new and returning customers to their sites. They produce content that is high quality and shareable; and on one of their blogs, they write people who have influenced their customers. They have attracted numerous consumers through these blogs and now have 4 different ones. Overall, it is important for your company to create a foundation for content marketing. Creating a team of individuals that will contribute to content marketing, creates a strong basic foundation for your company. You should always create a plan, and brainstorm your ideas, this will produce your content. The end steps include promoting and measuring your content, as this will help ensure its success.

Until the next post!

References

Rothman, D. (May,2015). Content Marketing Foundations [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/Marketing-Lead-Generation-tutorials/Tracking-mid-late-stage-metrics/369044/386380-4.html