HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY - Part Two

Although creating a content strategy may seem daunting, it is relatively simple to build a successful strategy and manage it over the long term. The key to success is to have a plan, a strategy, that will help you build the content you need, recruit content contributors, manage the editorial schedule, and promote your content to new prospects.

Here is a brief outline of the steps necessary to create and manage a successful content strategy:

1. Determine the types of content you need & your SEO keywords
2. Determine where your target audience consumes digital content
3. Create a digital distribution strategy
4. Build an editorial process and schedule
5. Recruit content contributors – writers and subject matter experts
6. Begin publishing on a consistent basis at a frequency that will be receptive
7. Review and measure which content is delivering the best results

STEP 1: Determine the types of content you need and your SEO keywords

The first step in building a successful content strategy is very much like the steps you’d take in building an SEO strategy. You need to understand what your customers and prospects want and need.

There are two basic ways to determine this: You can ask them and you can test them.

A basic survey asking your customers what they want and need should reveal some interesting trends, but to test them, find out what they actually read and look for is more important. A small sample from your best customers will help you to construct a model of the types of information that your ideal prospect will want. This sample should include web sites, types of articles, videos, blogs and other media that they regularly read and watch as a part of their business activities.

And remember, content isn’t just copy or text. It can be video, interactive features and demonstrations, audio, white papers like this, virtually every kind of conventional and new marketing materials available. Your organization is creating and using content all of the time. You just have to plan on how you’ll use it on your site.

And you’ll need to repeat this step often, tuning your results, discovering what your prospects want and need today.

STEP 2: Determine where your target audience consumes digital content

During your interviews, sales meetings, events and even support or service calls, ask your existing customers where they go to research, learn and stay up-to-date on your products and services. Are they a user of LinkedIn or facebook for business? What websites, trade publications and/or events do they frequent? Who do they read, listen to or watch to remain informed? All of these places, people and platforms can become part of your digital distribution strategy

STEP 3: Create a digital distribution strategy

When creating a distribution strategy, your website is the obvious place to start, but what about prospects who don't know your brand, product or service? Based on what you learned about your customers through interviews, sales meetings etc., You can determine the best channels to investigate and test.

LinkedIn is a great social channel for digital distribution. You're reading my content here and who knows, you may contact Minds On to help you with your website or content marketing project in the future.

Other channels to consider are:

• Email and landing page campaigns
• Industry or trade publication newsletters
• Industry bloggers
• Trade publication micro-sites
• Trades shows
• Webinars

STEP 4: Build an editorial process and schedule

An editorial process can be very simple or infinitely complex. At it’s simplest you need to be able to insure that the things you put on your website are of high quality, accurate and effective.

Your most basic process can be simply this:

? Writer creates content.

? Passes content to editor.

? Editor reviews, edits and publishes.

It can also be a complex workflow, routing pieces from any staff member, through departmental approvals, past marketing, legal and then scheduled for publishing. But all editorial workflows contain one basic quality: someone other than the creator reviews it before publishing.

Note, in smaller organizations it’s often the same person that creates and publishes. While this is not ideal, it is reality. If this is the case, use time to separate the steps. Never write and publish in one step. Take a break, hours if possible, then review and edit before publishing.

Your organizational credibility will, in a very large part, be based on the quality of what you publish. Spelling, grammar, clarity and completeness of thought are only the starting points; but not caring about these basics will dilute your message and diminish your impact.

Many organizations start out with ambitious plans that quickly fall apart. One of the most successful approaches is to build and run an editorial schedule.

An editorial schedule can be as simple as a calendar or spread sheet list with the content you plan on publishing on specific dates. That’s how newspapers and magazines fill up their pages. It’s a very useful web-publishing tool, too.

An editorial schedule isn’t a contract. If you have breaking news, you can publish that today instead of another article you have ready. And using your schedule, you can find a new slot for the delayed piece. Planning multiple posts for publishing targets gives you flexibility, especially when, for various reasons, promised commitments aren’t met.

Your schedule will also let you plan for themes, reinforce key concepts (and keywords), and make sure you are providing variety and depth for your audience.

STEP 5: Recruit content contributors – writers and subject matter experts

There are two main ways to acquire content: write it yourself (or pay for it to be written) or have your customers write it for you.

Inside your organization you have individuals that probably know a great deal about your product or service, the problems you solve for customers, and general industry issues and trends. Each department is expert in their own job or task for the organization. And each department should be able to contribute to the content needed for your site. If you can break down the barriers that naturally occur between departments, especially between marketing, sales, customer service and product development, you’ll find that they possess some fascinating information that prospects would kill for.

Depending on the skills of your staff, you can have staff members contribute articles on a regular basis – regular meaning from once a day to once a year. And if they don’t have the skills necessary to write or create other content, like videos, they you can hire professional writers and producers to work with your staff. A combination of professional copywriters, skilled in SEO techniques, with staff subject matter experts, can produce very effective content.

Your goal is to have a steady stream of content and your staff is your first, best source.

In addition to creating for your own content, your customers are an excellent source of content for your site. Recruit customers to tell their success stories with your product, but also give them a platform to share their expertise and insights. This may seem overwhelming, but it can be easily managed with an editorial process.

STEP 6: Publish content on a consistent basis and frequency

Content strategies only work when your organization has a strong, top-down commitment to growing an online reputation as a thought leader and trusted vendor. But with that commitment, someone in the organization has to take on the role as Publisher, the Editor-in-Chief. Part traffic cop, part cheerleader, part English teacher, this individual has to take the responsibility of keeping fresh content flowing.

In addition to ensuring that new content is created, the Publisher will also need to make sure that keywords are correctly used in the content, that headlines use strong keywords and attract readers, and that fresh content is promoted through other online channels, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Over time, high quality content, published frequently, will attract and hold a large audience. Don’t expect overnight success. Work for success in the long term.

There are other additional techniques that can be very effective. You may find that the creation of separate “micro-sites” can be effective for featuring specialized content (although be careful not to duplicate content between sites — that will result in a loss of search engine rankings). You can also place content on industry sites, news sites and partner sites. This technique is a very effective way to establish links and help prospect both find you and regard your organization as being “expert.”

One of your biggest tasks in working the plan will be to study the results, look at what is working, what people are reading, and to continually develop new content to support what’s effective, as well as to rework content that’s not delivering results.

STEP 7: Review and measure which content is delivering the best results

I remind clients and peers all the time that marketing is a science. It's important to define what you will measure, how you will measure and then review to see if your efforts were achieved. If they were, make adjustments and continue to improve the results. If not, refine the content, test different content and work to improve the results over time.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS - THE KEY TO CONTENT MARKETING SUCCESS

For organizations that make a commitment to content marketing it is very difficult to successfully manage using manual web construction and posting approaches. To manage the workflow, calendar and scheduling of content, a Content Management System (CMS) is required.

While some attempt to build their own systems, commercial systems provide significant functionality with the added stability and ongoing maintenance of packaged software. A successfully installed and configured CMS will allow your organization to specify an editorial workflow that makes sense for you, lets you include a large group of content contributors, and manages the SEO and keyword aspects of publishing and promoting your content.

An effective CMS will also include image galleries, marketing integration for e-mail and e-commerce with integrated deep analysis tools, allowing you to see what’s working, who it’s working for, and to drill down into the details and specifics, down to the keyword level, to assist in your continual improvement and ongoing content strategy.

As more and more companies move to CMS systems it’s important to consider engaging prospects and customers and generating conversations in your market. When selecting a CMS ensure it has blog capability, form integration and the ability to run polls and surveys inline. All of these features are essential for site visitors to learn more about you, as well as your product and service. These features also create opportunities for prospects and customers to interact, share, comment, and ultimately, choose your product or service over the competitions’.

SUMMARY

Organizations that publish fresh, high quality content, targeted at their ideal potential customers not only attract those prospects, but they gain better placement and ranking within search engines like Google. Content can include articles, videos and other materials from internal thought leaders and staff supported by professional writers, as well as submitted stories and testimonials from customers and organic content from comments, forums and social media integration.

ABOUT MINDS ON

Minds On is a recognized leader in B2B digital marketing with proven track record, knowledge and a finely tuned processes to get the job done. We provide an endless stream of Smart Creativity to differentiate your business in both the real and digital worlds. From web and mobile, to SEO, content marketing, content management and more. When you’re ready for a dose of Smart Creativity whether it’s Central Ohio or anywhere in the world we can help.

WRITER BIO

Dan Harris is VP of Strategy at Minds On and a well-recognized business-to-business marketing professional in the tech and telecommunication community. He personally implements and utilizes social, digital and traditional marketing, managed enterprise CMS implementation, SEO and content marketing to generate qualified leads resulting in sales.