You cannot hope for a successful content outcome in content marketing without a clear sense of intended outcome, and a strategy to support it.
We"€™re a fan of Joe Pulizzi"€™s B.E.S.T Formula to help with this. The purpose of BEST is simply don't start executing on your content marketing until you have a sound content strategy. And, we…
5 Reasons You Need a Content Marketing Strategy
So, social media is the current big thing taking a lot of our time, attention and emotional effort. But is it working for you, is your social media cart cart stuck in the mud regarding results? Are you struggling to figure out how to make it work for you?
If yes, why is that the case "€“ after all you have a Facebook Page, you"€™re probably tweeting and running a company blog, of sorts.
Have you considered that the social media cart is missing the content strategy horse?
Here are five reasons why a content strategy needs to be considered before figuring out how social media integrates into your marketing plans.
Reason 1. Little content = little conversation
Developing a content marketing strategy is about understanding your audience"€™s unmet needs. Whether customers, potential customers or influencers. Only then are…
Content Marketing for Natural Search
You will have no doubt read many times that 'Content is King'. Few blog posts however do a good job at explaining why, especially from an SEO perspective.
I love the potential of content marketing, the key reason for me is its ability to help link build in a creative, engaging and fun way. Using content in this way obviously has a lot of compounded benefits such as creating new referring domains and increasing brand awareness to name but two. From an SEO purist mindset it is all about generating inbound links.
Key benefits to using content to help link build:
You have something to talk about on forums / blog comments - it's therefore more natural
You have something to gift to people / businesses - so they want you to participate
You have something to bookmark (and for others to do the same) - you further increase reach
Unlike media…
Our review of a recent Logitech content strategist job description illustrating 8 requirements for a solid content strategy
Value: [rating=3]
Our commentary: Developing and refining content strategy will be an important part of improving digital marketing strategy for many organisations in 2011.
This job description for a content strategist in a large company helps show us the key aspects of content strategy.
Marketing implications: The requirements for this job summarises the essence of a sound content strategy:
1. Senior management must understand the importance of content strategy to invest in good quality resources with high-profile roles
2. Content must be of exceptional quality to be most effective - the job descriptions says: "useful, compelling and meaningful"
3. Involves a strategy for syndication - not limited to companies own site
4. Blends improving customer experience, customer engagement and SEO
5. Requires an editorial calendar to manage creation of content
6. Content quality improved through a continuous process applying analytics and customer…
Sharing a usability technique for reviewing content effectiveness
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: This is a great illustration of a standard usability technique applied to measure the effectiveness of a Content Strategy. (Sorry about the low fidelity - I was limited by the resolution within the Slideshare deck - see Slide 28 below).
This usability technique is often used as part of a focus group, but can be administered remotely by survey also.
Marketing implications: As well as reviewing copy or content quality, this is good technique to use for different page template designs, competitor benchmarking - I've seen cScape use this for comparing a site to out-of-sector companies too.
View on Slideshare: Measuring the effectiveness of content strategy…
Social Content Management System Tools Reviewed
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: Since many marketers have rushed to embrace Facebook, Twitter, blogs, customer ratings and reviews, and other social media platforms"€”inviting consumers to comment on their products and services across the Web"€”they are facing an unexpected consequence: content overload.
The posts, comments, tweets, videos, and other content your customers are creating about your product and services may feel like a tsunami. The lay on all the user generated content that should come as a result.
So what do you do? The good news is that several social media content-management systems (CMSes) to hand that allow marketers to not only manage the distribution and placement of the online content about their brands but also analyze and leverage that content to build their businesses. Marketing Profs have created a handy reference of the best 8 that they can find.
Marketing implications: Now that you've invested the time to…
The most inevitable trend in marketing?
As you know, advertising has pretty much worn out its effectiveness. In my experience it has been this way for years now, evidenced through increasing marketing cost and decreasing ROI. The key challenge therefore is figuring out what's going to replace interruptive advertising. This is where social media has gained so much attention - but in truth social media is powered by content, as Chris Brogan puts it, "€œContent is a means to deliver interest. It"€™s a gathering place for you and the people you hope to entertain / attract / educate / equip... [it"€™s] wood for the fireplace around which great stories are told"€.
So, I want to focus this post on the fuel that powers those social media conversations - because I believe it"€™s central to success in marketing, whether you"€™re already hot on social media or not. Consider…
We love this book, Get Content. Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett because content is at the heart of today's marketing and it does a fantastic job of explaining the why and the how of online content marketing.
The authors advice is summarised in the top 10 content marketing lessons which we review at the end of this post.
If you need to push content up the agenda in your organisation, and many need this, then we definitely recommend this book, but with one caveat we give at the end of this review.
I think it succeeds because it blends both practical, structured advice on creating a content strategy, plus many small, but specific case studies from many sectors to inspire you to develop a content strategy.
The B.E.S.T. formula
As an example of the structured practical guidance, we liked this formula for creating a content marketing roadmap. B.E.S.T stands…
In this interview which accompanies my other posts on trends and predictions for 2010, I interview Ian Truscott, Vice-President of Web Content Management at Alterian.
My interview explores trends in content management and practical ideas for improving engagement - I liked Ian's reference to the concept of "Smart content" - much content on corporate sites still doesn't have the context of categories and tags commonly used in blogs.
You can also read Ian's views on trends in engagement through content on the Engaging Times blog where Ian and other Alterian bloggers share their views on emerging trends on content management.
Marketing trends influencing content
Q1. Ian, what do you see as the broader trends in marketing today which affect the needs marketers have for managing content?
[Ian Truscott, Alterian] In the midst of a digital revolution, we are…
