Content Marketing (or " Content Marketing
") is one of the disciplines with the highest growth and interest that has
aroused in recent years in the world of digital marketing.
The change in consumer behavior has been one
of the main reasons for this boom. Today consumers are no longer passive
recipients and are no longer willing to allow advertising interruptions in the
media.
The response to these changes by advertisers
are new ways of understanding marketing in which consumers are the ones who
find the brands and interact with them in a consensual way without undesired
interruptions.
Within this current of thought are inbound
marketing , permission marketing and content marketing that, although with a
similar philosophy, have nuances and differences between them.
The goal of this post is to be a theoretical
and practical guide to content marketing that covers the main definitions, best
practices, ideas and everything needed to plan, implement and measure a content
marketing strategy.
What is content marketing?
This is a digital marketing strategy that
consists of creating and publishing quality content and informative
(non-commercial) character for our target audience. The objectives are: to
generate confidence, to become the authority within the sector, to obtain
traffic, to be in the top of mind of the consumers and to create a brand.
It must be understood that from the consumer's
point of view, the consumer is in the early stages of his buying cycle: he is
looking for information and is not yet ready to make a purchase or contract.
Therefore, the communication can not be commercial and the user will be little
prone to content that does not educate and value him.
From the point of view of the brand will be
consumers entering the top of the funnel (" Top of the Funnel ") and
working, educating and being in permanent interaction (" lead
nurturing" ) so that, in the Future, be prepared to become customers.
Define your Target
Before writing the first word it is important
to define who will consume the content and understand our target. The first
step is to create a Person who represents your audience. This is the basis not
only for the content marketing plan, but for the entire marketing strategy. It
is called " marketing or buyer person " and to define it must be
taken into account:
• Demography
: sex, age, geography, income level, occupation, marital status, educational
level.
• Tastes
and Style : values, interests, concerns, hobbies, lifestyle, personality, etc.
• Interaction
with the internet : types of users, what kind of sites they visit, use of
social networks and which ones, which information sites / blogs consult,
preferred devices, etc.
• Habits
of consumption .
Map the content in the different phases of the consumer
The content is a fundamental piece in each of
the phases through which the consumer
passes from being aware of the need until he executes the purchase
decision. Therefore, if the consumer passes a few phases, the content must be
planned accordingly:
• Top
of the Funnel Content (TOFU) or content for the top of the funnel : the purpose
of that content is to reach people at the beginning of the purchase cycle. At
the moment of the consumer this content must be 100% educational and 0%
commercial and must give answers to the questions and questions that may have.
The goal of this content is to achieve visibility, traffic, generate brand,
enter the top of mind of educating
consumers and open the door to future interactions between the brand and the
user.
Features: This is the kind of content that
will bring the vast majority of traffic and that will serve to feed social
networks and educational email marketing campaigns.
Examples of content: blog posts, ebooks,
infographics, videos (short), basic guides, checklists.
• Middle
of the Funnel Content (MOFU) : is the content intended for consumers who are
beginning to be informed of the options (they already have their "
shortlist ") and look for more information and value those options. It is
a 50% commercial-50% educational content. Some examples of content may be:
success stories, longer videos or webinars.
• Bottom
of the Funnel Content (BOFU) : is the consumer content fully informed and
prepared to make the purchase. The goal is for us to be the chosen option
within the shortlist of the consumer. It is a 100% commercial content. Some
examples are: coupons, offers, proposals, demos or brochures.
To plan
1. Brainstorming: create a list of ideas
Before starting to write you should stop to
think about the content that will be generated and to plan how, who, when and
why it will be published . This content should feed social networks, be
interesting to readers and search engine friendly. Some tips to feed the list
of ideas:
• Use
the keyword list to inspire you. Investigate again to find new opportunities.
• Answer
the following questions: What type of content is the most popular in your
industry / niche? What do the most relevant blogs write in your niche? What is
the most traction generated?
• Do
brainstorming sessions with the team.
• Research
your competition and reference publications from other sectors.
Create mechanisms to be aware of everything
that happens and generate ideas
• Monitor
key words in your niche with Google Alerts or a monitoring tool .
• Create
an account in an RSS reader like Feedly and read the news of the sector daily.
Do not forget to follow the main leaders and competitors.
• Constantly
use keyword tools and Google Trends to find ideas.
• Use
the following tool:
Content Idea Generator
It is one of the most powerful tools to
generate ideas for your content strategy. It consists of a spreadsheet in
GDrive where, inquiring the keywords to be investigated, it returns you news
information (Google and Bing), Social Networks and aggregators (Digg, Reddit,
Youtube, Topsy, etc) and tools Trends like Google Trends and UbberSuggest.
To use it you must follow the following steps:
1. Open
the spreadsheet in this link .
2. Logearte
with a Gmail or Google Apps account.
3. Click
on File> Create a copy (in the main navigation)
4. Fill
in the B3 cell with the keywords that you want to investigate. If the keyword
has more than one word, you should use the search command "+", that
is, if you want to investigate "cheap hotel", you should put it as
"hotel + cheap" (without quotes or spaces).
Define the format
There are several types of content that you
should consider in your content marketing strategy. Be aware of your ability to
generate content and the characteristics of your market when planning the
volume of each:
• Posts
: They are the first type of content you should create in any content strategy
because it is about the basics and the easiest way to get started. The most
recommended are posts of between 1000 and 2000 words that address topics of
interest to the target with a certain level of depth.
• Ebooks
: This is a type of content that is longer than a post. It must be interesting,
practical and useful to educate the reader, generate interest and get
downloads. The best practice is to place it in a landing page specially
dedicated to that ebook (in this link you can see several:
http://www.bluecaribu.com/ebooks ) and that the visitor will download it in
exchange for your email. Understand it as an exchange in which visitors are
looking for solutions to their problems and with this type of content is given
response and educated while entering the sales cycle of your company. If you
need ideas to create an ebook, in this link you have 7 ideas to start .
Tip : An ebook can be a set of posts. If you
plan your editorial calendar correctly, every 5 or 6 posts will have enough
material for an ebook. Just format and create the landing page to start
generating records.
• Newsletter
: Email marketing far from being dead or being a disused technique, is the most
effective online marketing way to prepare for the purchase of potential
customers and take care of existing ones. Make subscribe to the newsletter easy
and use the database to offer discounts, promotions, industry news, contests,
promote the content (webinars, ebooks, etc).
• Infographics
: These are some of the most fashionable online marketing tools today. A good
infographic brings together the best features that can be requested from any
type of content: it is viral, easy to share, visual, and easily transmits the
information. In addition, it is a very good way to generate inbound links that
support SEO . You have some examples of
our infographics in this link .
• Studies
: Although they require work can be a sensational vehicle to become a reference
of your sector. Research trends, find data, conduct surveys and collect
interesting information about your market and create sector studies to publish
them. If it is interesting enough you will have a high probability of being
published by reference. An example: " The state of the 15 largest
Colombian companies on the Internet "
Tip : Take advantage of the list of media you
have from your PR strategy to send them the study press release and the link to
try to be published.
• Webinar
: One of the best ways to prepare potential clients or to retain existing ones
is live interaction. To promote it and generate registrations you can publish
it on the blog, write to your email list, share it on social networks, try to
reach agreements with blogs of the sector with a larger audience or carry out a
paid advertising campaign.
• Presentations
: this is another way of creating content that, in many cases, is a consequence
of teaching courses or lectures at conferences. Sharing these resources in
SlideShare and in the blog is an excellent way to make these resources
accessible to more people. Here you can find an example of an Email Marketing
Course in Presentation format .
Content Types that Work
Once you have chosen the format, the next thing
is to look for the type of content that really works. Based on Content
Marketing Institute infographics , these are 21 types of content that always
work:
1. Content
that reminds us that life is short .
2. Content
that reminds us that dreams can become reality .
3. Content
that gives us encouragement to believe in bigger things .
4. Content
that reminds us of what really matters .
5. Content
that explains the essence of something .
6. Content
with unexpected turns .
7. Content
that tells a story .
8. Content
that leads us along a path .
9. Content
that inspires us to do something .
10. Content
that makes us laugh or, at least, smile.
11. Content
that makes us cry .
12. Content
that tells us a secret .
13. Content
that surprises .
14. Content
that motivates us not to abandon .
15. Content
that reminds us that we are unique and motivates us to remain so .
16. Content
that reminds us that there are still more .
17. Content
that confirms suspicion .
18. Content
that questions things that are assumed .
19. Content
that educates and entertains .
20. Content
where David defeats Goliath .
21. Content
that gives us a different point of view .
Practical : If you want to see examples of the
above, we recommend you go to CopyBlogger (one of the world's leading blogs for
blogging copywriting) and see how they use each of those contents. Especially
in the titles.
Examples of content
• View
Profile
• X
common errors
• List
of benefits
• List
of things / errors to avoid
• Establish
a position opposite to something
• Collect
interesting news for your audience community
• List
of tips / tricks
• Collect
interesting videos for your audience
• Press
releases
• Beginner's
Guide
• The
difference between A and B
• How
to create / improve / get ...
• Everything
you ever wanted to know about ...
• Curiosities
• Alternatives
to ...
• The
art of…
• Lessons
from (some famous person) to ...
3. Create an editorial calendar and, above
all, complete it!
Good intentions are useless if the content
strategy is not executed afterwards and everything is left in a wet state. For
this, it is best to have an editorial calendar that everyone has access on
Google Drive where responsibilities, dates and the content to be created are
delimited. Here are some of the fields you can use:
Post title
Post information source (s)
Category within the blog
Objective: educate, inform, generate
leads, generate traffic, generate authority, etc.
Length
Responsible for writing it
Ebook: if it is part of an ebook that is
going to be published
Date published / frequency
Title SEO
Meta Description
URL to publish
Source: TopRank.com
4. Create the platform for your content
Creating a blog can be something simple
technically, but very important at the social media level because it allows you
to have a hub with all the content that is published.
WordPress is the most recommended CMS to get started. Simply download it from
wordpress.org for free, install it on your server and follow the steps to
configure it. The best thing is to install it in blog.mydominio.com or in
mydomain.com/blog.
Once the basic configuration is ready, it is
time to think about the look of the blog
. For design there are two possibilities: hire someone to create a design from
scratch or buy a template and modify it to fit your corporate identity.
Remember, a blog is not a work of art . It has to be
functional, have an attractive design and generate a positive visitor
experience.
Once completed the steps above is time to add
functionality to the blog. WordPress has free plugins that provide functions such as forms,
integration with social networks, search engine optimization, etc. Test the
plugins according to the needs, but do not forget to install:
• Antispam:
Akismet
• SEO:
WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Social
Media: Sexy Bookmarks
• Perfomance:
W3 Total Cache
• Security:
WP-DB-Backup
• Editorial
Calendar: If your blog is WordPress and you prefer a more advanced solution you
can use Editorial Calendar Plugin .
Optimize for Search
Planning and creating content is a fundamental
part of starting the content marketing strategy. But much of the success lies
in the distribution of such content . To do this, positioning the content in
search engines so that users looking for information can find it is a
fundamental task.
To have the maximum potential to position each
piece of content the first rule is to not become obsessed with SEO . Yes, it is
important, but creating content thinking about search engines and not users can
have the opposite effect to what we want and not be quality content for both of
them.
The steps to follow consist of the following:
A) Select the main keyword for the content
being generated. This should have been done during the planning phase (above),
but it's a good time to check out Google Trends to see trends, related and
increasing keywords and geographic interest.
In addition, if you use in your WordPress a
plugin like SEO Yoast or similar you will have the possibility to establish the
main keyword and to see suggestions:
B) Onpage optimization :
• Title
: is the blue clickable title that appears in the search engines. You must
include the main keyword at the beginning of the title, which should not exceed
65 characters. Make it descriptive and draw the attention of the user.
• Meta
description : are the two lines of text that appear under the title and the
URL. Must be 160 characters or less and should be designed to get the user's
attention and get clicks. You must include the primary and secondary keywords
if they exist.
• URL
: includes the main keyword.
• Optimize
the title : include your main keyword once in the title. More will be
considered " keyword stuffing ".
• Optimize
content : include the main keyword naturally in the content several times. It
is also advisable to include related keywords and synonyms.
• Main
image : includes the main keyword in the ALT attribute.
• Link
: to add value to readers, promote other content within the same page and
increase the number of page views.
If you use SEO Yoast (or a similar plugin) you
will see at the end of each post a checklist with the optimization of each of
the most important SEO elements for the main keyword. Once you have finished
editing it is the best time to make the necessary corrections:
For more information on SEO we invite you to
download the SEO guide for beginners with more than 75 practical tips to perform
the optimization of your website.
B) AuthorRank : This is a mechanism by which
Google allows to link the content to its authors, regardless of where it is
published. In this way, by identifying the author, Google will be able to know
the quality of the content and apply it as a factor within its algorithm.
At a practical level, it is achieved by
creating a profile of Google+ content (below we tell you the details). The main
benefit is that the author's image
appears in the search engines, traffic is increased and a reputation is
generated as an author .
On many occasions a result in position 3, 4 or
5 will receive more clicks than the number 1 if it has the image of the author.
If you want to know everything about Google Authorship we recommend this
explanatory post .
Once visitors arrive, it's time to turn them
into readers
The content that has been generated for the
content marketing strategy is an investment with enormous possibilities of
bringing a greater return. To do this, the next step is to open the door for subsequent interactions
with visitors who reach our content for the first time and turn them into
readers . The goal is to achieve microconversion, that is, any mechanism to
re-impact those visitors.
Remember : each post has to be a landing page perfectly designed for the
visitor to become a subscriber, part of your email list or follower in
social networks :
• Getting
followers on social networks : One of the reasons why social media users follow
a brand is because of the content it generates. Think of it this way: the user
has found a piece of non-commercial quality content of a topic that interests
him, would not it be a good idea to follow that brand in social networks to be
aware of new content?
Tip: Integrate your social networks with
your blog by, for example, the Facebook LikeBox (on the side of this post) or the Follow Twitter button ( point # 12 in this post ).
• Getting
subscribers to the email list:
Generating an email list is a key activity for your marketing strategy .
Therefore, understanding how to segment and what tools to use is of great importance.
Although the first recommendation is
Mailchimp , there are other email
marketing tools that can be very valid.
The goal is that by downloading an ebook, registration to a webinar or any form
of lead generation the visitor will leave us their email.
• FeedBurner
: For those people in regular reading your content the best tool is feedburner.
The goal should be to provide these subscribers with enough quality content to
end up buying.
5. Guest Blogging
The guest blogging consists of writing original
and quality content for other publications . For a startup is a vital activity
to gain reputation in the market, gain visibility, get traffic and improve
positioning. Just as the list of influencers should be worked out as part of a
social media strategy and media list in PR efforts , it is critical to
investigate the opportunities to appear as a guest writer in reference
publications.
Do not hesitate to ask if they accept these
types of collaborations and focus on maximizing each opportunity by creating
quality content. Every time you get a publication you have managed to reach the
entire audience of this blog, its followers in social networks, generated links
to your website and, most important of all, created a collaborative
relationship that surely brings you benefits in the future . If you want to
learn more about guest posting, we recommend an ebook posted by MyBlogGuest at
this link: Download Ebook .
Tip : While a post takes time, dedication and
can only be sent to a site, when other types of content such as sector studies
or infographics are produced, they can be sent to a multitude of contacts.
Content Distribution
One of the main problems of a content
marketing strategy is to give sufficient visibility to the content that has
been generated to meet the goals set . Much has been said about " content
is the king " and all its benefits, but the truth is that without the
proper distribution nothing will serve the investment.
Before publication
Before posting you have to optimize the post
so that it has the potential to optimize in search engines as we have seen in
previous points. In the following example you can see what has been the
evolution of the more than 3,200 free visits from search engines of the post
" 5 Indispensable Digital Marketing Books " in the 8 months after its
publication:
As you can see the organic traffic does not
occur immediately after launch, but is progressive and long term. In the image
you can see the main keywords for which this post has received visits.
The most important thing is to understand that
each post has the same potential as this to be positioned in the medium / long
term and generate constant and growing visits to the content that has been
generated. Following the example, imagine that every day a post like this is
published and brings us 3000 visits a year. Now make the count of how many
visits would be for our brand, visibility, followers, emails, etc.
Note: " (not provided) " are visits
from Google in which information is not displayed for privacy issues .
After the Publication
• Send
an Email to your list of subscribers : every time a new post is published send
an email to your list of subscribers. If you publish very often or do not want
to send too many emails you can send daily, weekly or monthly bulletins. This
way you will get a large number of readers almost immediately. Remember to
properly target URLs to display statistics in web analytics.
• Share
on Twitter : between 3 and 4 times the day that is published (morning,
afternoon, night, dawn) and several times more during the following days.
• Publish
to Facebook and Promote : share once in your Facebook page and value the
possibility of giving you greater visibility by promoting.
• Share
on Google+ and Linkedin : Just like on Facebook, sharing your content on
Google+ once will suffice. Sharing in G + will get the content indexed faster
in Google. Do not forget to mark the publication as "Public".
• Linkedin
Groups and Communities on Google+ : search, identify and participate in
affinity communities in these social networks. Once you are an active member
and you understand the type of content that is shared and what members are
interested in you can start sharing your content in a way that adds value to
the rest of the community. Remember: it's not about sending spam!
• Thanks
and interacts with the comments, RTs and responds to the mentions.
Do not stay there, take one step more than the
rest with PR
The rule is simple: if you do what everyone
else will get the same result as the rest (and it will take longer to get your
goals). Therefore , to go one step ahead and achieve the greatest possible
distribution, we must unite PR efforts with those of content marketing.
The steps to follow are those:
• Open
a spreadsheet (in GDrive preferably) and start a list of influencers in your
industry.
• Search
on platforms like Technorati, FollowerWonk or Google the influencers of each
niche.
• Find
who has written about the topics you are going to publish.
• Fill
in the following fields: name, email, twitter, blog. To find all this
information we recommend this post .
Once you have published the content, write a
personalized email using one of the following excuses:
• The
influencer has been mentioned or linked.
• Ask
for feedback.
• It
is a topic that he / she has already spoken in another article and is
expanding, showing another vision, etc.
• This
is a topic that may be of interest to the influencer for X reason.
…and works? DEFINITELY
Whenever the content is extremely good,
quality, value and contact the right person the possibility that an influencer
share your content increases .
Some tips: a) do not write too often, b)
select the person to be written very well, c) customize the email d) ask you to
share it on social networks if you have found it interesting.
Here is an example of how an influencer can
give you visibility and credibility (Avinash Kaushik is one of the world
references in Web Analytics):
Content
Marketing Strategy Metrics
All strategy and investment must have
actionable metrics that indicate the real evolution vs. objectives. In essence
there are four types of metrics that serve to measure the progress and impact
that the content marketing strategy in the company:
• Consumption
metrics are the first to be taken into account. Its function is to quantify
whether the content being produced is being consumed by the target audience and
how. Some of the metrics to consider are:
Visits
Home
Video Views
Downloads (contained in some type of downloadable file).
Time on site
% Of recurring visitors
• Metrics
of reach (or sharing) : these are metrics that inform us of the scope that can
have the content and, indirectly, of the quality of this. These are the easiest
metrics to quantify. In addition, it helps to publicize the brand and brings
more visitors. Some of the metrics that must be taken into account are:
Likes, tweets, shares, +1 and pins
Inbound links
Tip: You can check the number of times
that any page on your website has been shared
with SocialCrawlytics.com
• Lead
generation metrics: these are metrics whose purpose is to measure how visitors
become prospects and become part of the company's database. It is the first
objective of the content strategy: to turn visitors into prospects. Some of the
metrics to take into account are:
List of emails: number of new emails in
the list of email marketing.
RSS / blog subscribers list
Conversion rate.
• Business
Generation Metrics : The ultimate goal of any content marketing strategy is to
contribute to business growth. However, in most cases attribution is difficult
since the consumer can discover the brand by the content, but make numerous
interactions before becoming a customer.
Online sales
Offline Sales
Objectives of the content marketing strategy
Remember that content generation is not the
end, but the means to achieve more important goals:
1. Increase
the visibility of the brand and the visits to the web.
2. Build
an email database that feeds email marketing actions.
3. Publish
original content, quality and interest to our audience to share on social
networks .
4. Create
relationships with other publications to be able to use them as a platform to
publish our content and reach your audience.
Become the benchmark in the market , gain
reputation, prepare consumers to become customers and generate sales.
One last tip
Although it is difficult and motivation is
undermining remember that it is a long-term strategy and that the results will
not happen overnight. But they can take months or even years.
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