Why content-creation is as scientific as brand-creation

Most of us are faintly aware how much market research and analysis goes into the development and launch of FMCG brands. Years of planning and focus groups underpin the release of the new washing powder, cereal, dog food...

Well, the same systematic thinking and processes are being applied in modern B2B publishers.

At the Information Industry Network’s “Digital Content Strategies” seminar, Ian Robins of Bristol-based online B2B publisher Sift Media described how the company (publisher of sites such as AccountingWeb and BusinessZone) creates named personas, with associated personal storylines, for each of its niche audiences. “There is a movement away from writing for Google towards writing for people,” says Robins.

His definition of a persona is “a model that summarises a specific person, based on research, and which gives you a representation of your key audience segments.”

Sift has a systematic process for creating personas, with a seven-step methodology (see below). Note that once the personas are in place, they are promoted internally within the organisation (not just among editorial teams) to create conversation and buzz. The stories around each persona are updated every quarter to accommodate new insights.

1. Capture what you’d like to know about your audience (5 or 10 key questions)  
2. Explore your site analytics to identify trends and behaviours.  
3. Segment your audience into frequency of visit (flyby (1-3 pieces of content pm); loyal (4-20); power audiences (21+)
4. Develop 3 key personas from the data.
5. Engage editors and other interested teams.
6. Tell the stories within the data. Find the stores within the data and personas and share them internally. See how you can evolve them.
7. Bring your audiences alive internally.

The academic publishing community has been in a tizz for years about whether to give away content for free. Understandably so. According to Jon White of White Digital Consulting, the estimated size of B2B publishing worldwide is $100bn; the top six (yes, six) media tech businesses have combined revenues of $510bn. Go figure where the power lies.

White, who has led run several turnarounds in academic publishers, says that publishers must look at making content freely available, while allowing users to interact with the content (creating infographics etc). Forget trying to sell the content; think about how to commercialise the network you’re building. (Interestingly, some scientific publishers are starting to commercialise content that they would previously have rejected by using it to attract new scientists to their online communities.)

Interacting with content means repurposing and redeploying content in many different channels: white papers, blogs, research, webinars, case studies… Which of these works best? “All of them,” says White.

Ian Hart was formerly an editor at B2B publisher Informa; today he’s a “senior product manager” at Informa Agribusiness Intelligence. The company introduced the idea of product management into publishing in 2015, deliberately borrowing the approach of the tech and FMCG industries.

Hart’s definition: “Product management is an independent team that uses customer-led evidence to own and help executive a strategic roadmap for a product or product set. By developing, maintaining and retiring products, product management supports the commercial targets of the business.”

Informa operates to a “Pragmatic Marketing Framework “ which has a bewildering 37 elements! Of these, by far the most important is “Market problems”.  It’s the job of all those working on a particular product to understand the market problems; where the customers’ pain points are.  As a result, Hart conducts 90 face-to-face customer interviews a year. This direct customer feedback then drives product development.

It is simply not good enough, says Hart, for editorial teams to produce content on the basis of what interests them and assume that they understand their readers want. It’s flawed thinking to suggest changes to a website or content strategy on the basis of what one or two of your “best contacts” say.

UBM (United Business Media) is a B2B publisher that’s remodelled itself as an events business. Its strategy and, thus, content strategy is “events first”. To illustrate why it’s moved towards this model, UBM has brands with media revenues of ￡500,000 and events or exhibition revenues of ￡1m-￡10m. A small core media hub can drive a sizeable events business.

Luke Bilton, UBM EMEA’s content director, says the business takes a ruthlessly scientific approach to content. Anyone in the publishing or content business must have a data-driven culture. There’s no point in endlessly vomiting out content that doesn’t engage, doesn’t prompt sharing, doesn’t elicit meaningful action? According to BuzzSumo, 75% of randomly selected articles from the web have no external links and, therefore, make zero impact.

Content at UBM is measured against four key metrics:

• Size of online audience/unique users (the top of the funnel)
• New data
• Event registration
• Live event experience

What the company has discovered is that a small proportion of its content dramatically outperforms the rest: 20 articles make a 20x greater impact (against the four KPIs) than the bottom 450. “Don’t vomit out content.”

Content performance is an item on the agenda at management meetings. Each event is scrutinised for how the content is contributing to registrations and interest. Using a dashboard, it’s easy to flag up events that are under-performing.

Bilton’s conclusions about publishing in a digital world:

• Content has to be driven by data-driven culture
• Set simple KPIs and be consistent
• Teams need to understand (and be trained in) analytics and tools such BuzzSumo, Moz and SEMRush
• Past behavior is the best predictor for future success. Repurpose and repromote content to maximise its effect. (Note to publishers: don’t relaunch your event website every year as you’ll lose your accumulated domain authority.)
• Obsess over conversation rate optimization – inline promotion is 10X greater than ads; network effect is 80:20 of impact.

Thanks to the Information Industry Network for a very interesting day.