An infographic explaining how inbound marketing works together with content marketing
Whether you call it inbound marketing, social media marketing or content marketing, we're broadly referring to the same thing; at least that's how we see it.
Dave and I believe that inbound marketing starts with considered, quality content, well published and promoted that, in turn, drives the inbound benefit through sharing and search.
The 'free bonus' is that you're link-building and gaining social signals for search engine optimisation as well creating great content - something so often over-looked and under-valued.
The Content Marketing model infographic
This Content Marketing model was developed at First 10 Digital when working with a client who wanted to understand the full process for her team. We hope our infographic will help you plot your success too.
Content marketing blueprint
People liked it so much we thought it deserved a more polished design…
How to promote your company blog to reach a larger audience
Writing a blog doesn't end when you hit the publish button. Far from it. In this third part of our series on business blogging, René Power reviews the best approaches to seeding and distributing your blog content - giving it the best chance of being seen by the people you're targeting.
1. Promote it on your website
Add a snippet to your home page. It provides a sign post for visitors and also offers some additional search engine optimisation benefits if you have considered your keywords carefully.
2. Index your blog with major blog directories
Ensure your blog is listed in as many blog directories as possible, particularly those with specialist sections. Why? Backlinks to your blog are still one of the most important factors in determining how visible your blog (and…
8 key issues to review to make sure your blog supports company goals
This is the second in a series of blog posts aimed at helping business bloggers. The first post explored getting started and avoiding writer's block, sometimes an issue at this time of year. In this post, René Power examines the key elements of a successful business blog.
If you're running a business targeting other businesses in 2012, it is likely you have either read about or been advised to introduce a blog to your website. The benefits of business blogging are much chronicled - Dave and Chris both covered it from a commercial and SEO viewpoint.
But with a bewildering choice of over 250 million websites and 130 million blogs (with five million new ones coming online every year), your customers don't have a lot of time or attention. How does a corporate blog attract and retain readers? (Statistics…
Core skills for non-media companies
Not long ago, everyone was talking about the power of “Like” and nothing seemed easier for a brand than building a tribe of followers; people who declared they liked your company, its brand or product.
This lazy approach to digital marketing led brands into thinking, falsely, that they had found a cheap and easy way to build a network of brand advocates online, the type of people who would enthusiastically follow a brand’s daily posts and pass these on, regardless of how dull or self-centered the updates were, to their friends and followers.
Then came the social break-up
Recent research in a paper entitled “The Social Break-up”, shows that people are more fickle than that. The paper from ExactTarget demonstrates that social marketing with Tweets and updates that resemble press releases or ad copy (broadcast messages) doesn’t build tribes and that lazy, sloppy social media marketing turns people…
Where social media marketing misses the content opportunity
I've been thinking about the key elements of ongoing inbound marketing activities - with the goal of driving sustainable interactions beyond one campaign.
Our agency, First 10, played a part in a small and successful campaign this week to help promote a local, Leeds based homeless charity called Simon on the Streets, and it's this that got me thinking.
Largely promoted via Twitter, the campaign has been great for the charity - and done with zero budget and no media spend. The content was creative images from a promotional campaign run by their creative agency, McGrath O'Toole. Aside from zero spend, the approach to the campaign echoes questions and enquiries that we get asked regarding digital media marketing campaigns - the requests tend to follow a familiar line:
Create a digital campaign to leverage a piece of existing content that already exists
Optimise that content, help make it…
A case study and examples of reviewing content marketing effectiveness in Google Analytics
In our 2 previous posts on selecting the best KPIs for reviewing content marketing effectiveness we looked at the best types of measures to use. In this post, I get into the details of how to check some of these KPIs in Google Analytics and in particular to show your efforts in creating content impact leads or sales.
Remember that we need to isolate the effect of particular content you have invested in in creating incremental leads or sales. To help do this, it's best if your site structure is setup right to measure effectively - I use the engineering term DFA "Design for Analysis" to prompt site designers think about this. I'll take some examples from ClickThrough Marketing who I have helped provide content for - around a year ago we created a series of printed 101…
A genuine framework to operationalise your inbound (or content) marketing
We're big fans of the marketing that Eloqua do, much of it with designers JESS3, they do inbound/content marketing so well - it's gold standard stuff in terms of best practise. Check out their Revenue Blog, Revenue SlideShare and their Revenue Stream. One of their most popular, highly effective, awareness generating pieces of content (this blog being a case in point) is their Content Grid, which has just had a refresh, see below.
This v2 builds upon the original (see right at the bottom) - illustrating the connection between content type and distribution channel. It now adds on the perspective of the buyer, the concept of a multi-stage conversion funnel, and a comprehensive collection of KPIs, we blogged something related to those KPI's earlier this week for content marketing. As Eloqua remind,…
How do we establish the Return on Investment from content marketing?
This is a pretty big question we're keen to explore with you since although much is written about why we must put more effort into content marketing, there's relatively little about how you make the business case and then review content ROI and effectiveness. Important commercial questions!
But, what's the best way to frame the question "What is our ROI from content marketing"? With content being everything contained on your site and then shared and syndicated to other sites and networks, it's similar to asking "How do I measure my digital marketing success outside of the paid media channels"? With that in mind, let's break it down in how you might approach it within your business or organisation. I've been discussing this with Dave and there's a lot to look at, so we'll have two posts, in the first we'll look…
The only marketing left
"Content is the only marketing left", suggests Seth Godin. I think that statement has never been truer, if marketing is about respecting and teaching your customers to believe in you over other brands. I'd say it is, these days. Seth has argued for years that this is the basis of new marketing, a wave of other thought leaders have backed this too - David Meerman-Scott and Gary Vaynerchuck being just two of them. Someone becomes a fan, follower, lead or customer because you help them feel better about their world, it makes more sense and they are able to make decisions about something.
So, where are the marketers?
Thinking how we can apply this to our businesses, I wonder where exactly have the marketers gone, then! All we hear these days is how to leverage communications channels like email or social media, or exploit SEO… as if there's a…
Frustrated that your content isn't getting the reach? You've done the hard work, developed some great content but it's just not happening in the results stakes?
1. Objectives and purpose
What is the point of the content and what do you want it to achieve? Define this clearly, are you using it the right way? This can be complex with multiple objectives or it can be as simple as getting readers to visit a web page with a request form on it. Either way, know what you're aiming for and the related KPI's and objectives you're going to use to prove impact.
2. Relevant communications
Do the research to ensure relevance and customer centricity when talking about or sharing the content. Use any existing customer personas to guide editorial, also delve in to some basic keyword research within search engines and social - why is this good? It's the language that you're market is…
