Top 14 Golden Rules of Content Marketing

I was talking today to a content strategist of a pretty amazing and growing Canadian company called Unbounce today, and it got me thinking about content marketing. 

It sort of took me back to the days of when I first read HubSpot's Inbound marketing primer. Those were the days, when quality content was enough to generate leads, when barely anyone had decent blogs. 

You wanted to build an audience and cater to them, which reminds me, what after-all are the golden rules of content marketing. Let's try to reincarnate those ideas to contemporary trends. Some things never change. 

Content that's Helpful 

1- Content should be educational, inspirational and create readership with the intended audience, rather than self-promote. 

Content that's Optimized for SEO 

2- Content should be partnered with SEO intimately to dominate a vertical and an audience. Findability equals inbound lead generation, high SEO content keeps getting link juice for months and even years later. That's sustainable, right?

Content that's Planned in a Strategy as part of a Marketing Plan

3- Develop a content calendar with long and short-term content strategy. Develop a variety of short form and long-form content posts for different purposes. Integrate content into a video content strategy for 2016, since mobile viewing is becoming dominant. 

Content that's Authentic 

3- Create Content that your audience needs, not that you prefer. That's why self promotional or even customer success does not always make sense. Does your audience really want to read about your other customers?

Content that's Not Just Yours 

4- Facilitate User Genrated Content, that your customers actually believe in and that builds actual brand trust. In 2016, brands that talk about themselves are missing out on higher brand trust of letting their own audience participate in the story-telling. Creating UGC contests is now the norm, rather than the exception to the rule. 

Content that's Fresh for Millennials 

5- If content is for the audience, content in 2016 has to target Millennials, the next big buyer demographics. This means another leap of what content is, micro content, glance content and video snippet content. 

Content that Converts

6- Create content for every touch point of the sale funnel, if such a funnel even exists anymore in your industry. 

Content Distribution 

7- Content that's not distributed and optimized in its reach, is wasted. For example, me writing a pulse article that gets 50 views, it could be argued is wasted ROI. Organic reach is not enough in 2016, it has to be shared to influencers, amplified, PPC, boosted, targeted, re-targetted, redistributed, shared on social, shared on groups, turned into infographics, turned into tweet snippets, etc... Use the 20/80 rule, for every hour spent on content creation, have someone do 4 work hours on its distribution optimization. 

Analytics 

8- A/B Test your content, do analysis on its performance, analytics and even down to the day of the week, and time of the day of the post. Know the best times to push content, the best times to distribute it on social media, the optimal number of times to re-publish it on social and the optimal frequency to share it. Good content, should not just create one spike at the time of publication, you should find ways to keep it going. This ultimately will work the best with keyword analysis and great SEO. 

Know Thy Customer

9- In life they say know thyself, well in content they say know they customer. This implies you've done your research on your audience, their personas and their likely reading habits. Does 500 word content work for them or do they prefer 1000+ words, do they like video embedded in the content or just images? Writing for your audience takes time, because we aren't psychic, we have to ask our audience what they want. 

Content That's Native 

10- Create content that's native. If it's a blog post, it should feel like it. If it's for instagram, twitter, facebook or snapchat, it's going to be tweaked and have a different tone to that channel. Native means channel appropriate. Even video content that's on YouTube or Facebook is very different optimized and scripted accordingly. Blog content on Medium or LinkedIn Pulse for example, are totally different. 

Content Adapted to the Customer Journey 

11- Content that speaks to your customer's journey. Don't just think of the sales funnel, think of the touch-points your customers go through in relation to your solution, service or product. How do they find you? What keywords do they search? What content speaks the best to that? What content or CTAs have worked in the past the most to get them to buy? This is trial and error, live and learn. You may be surprised sometimes what kind of content actually works. 

Content Appropriate to the New Attention Economy 

12- Master Millennial glance content, that is, micro content that's the golden nuggets of the best content snacks you can create. These can be humor, inspirational, quotes, beauty, imagery, story-telling, whatever. This is Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Peach, Snapchat. This is saying you care about their channel, and aren't just trying to sell them something but you are doing branding well, because you are like them. 

Focus on Quality 

13- Focus on quality of content instead of volume of content. For example, trim your blog progressively keeping only the best performing 30% of blog posts, do the same for your Instagram page, what are you left with? Only the best. This is common practice. 

Content 2.0 (Real-time Content) 

14- Have interactive content. Do Blab.im sessions or Periscope or a survey re surveymonkey. Create a contest or a viral video or a PR stunt. Surprise with your content, don't just always do the same thing. Mix it up, create new emotional brand impressions. Think of the success of Twitter chats. Why? Because they are interactive and show something of value. Host webinars and do gated content of an epic content that solicits customer sign-up. 

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P.S. I'm amused to inform you, you may have to scroll down past the Fox, the Sunset, till the peaches to find me there.