Slide deck from the Digital Matter video tutorial series on content marketing: how to think as a marketer and not as a blogger when designing a marketing strategy based on content.

1. CONTENT MARKETING
1/3
Andrea Nicosia
for

2. • It’s a marketing strategy
• Used to market (promote, sell, get attention to) something
• Using content
• Published on an personal or on a third party channel
What is Content Marketing

3. What kind of content?

4. I blog, therefore I do content
marketing!
Content marketing IS NOT blogging
Blogging  producing content
Content marketing  using content as a tool for marketing.
Therefore:
Think as a marketer, not as a blogger!
Biggest rookie mistake

5. Corollary 1:
Your business must work by itself
content marketing will not solve
business problems
Corollary 2:
Your content must be aligned with your
business and with your audience
Remember

6. Meaning: what is your angle? Your theme? Why your
content is different from anyone else’s one?
You can provide tools, insights, actionable items, opinions.
Something unique and valuable for your audience.
Hint: the latest news from your industry? If it’s “just the
news”, there are already a thousand other content
providers around.
Unique Selling Proposition

7. The goal of content marketing is to build a
relationship and to build trust.
It takes time.
Time

8. What is a content marketing strategy?
• What goal (this is important: a strategy is not how to reach a
goal. Strategy is choosing a goal and planning the actions to
reach it.)
• What content
• What unique selling proposition
• For whom
• Where to deploy
• How to measure results.
Content marketing is marketing strategy

9. We create content for a community with a problem
Do not think about a “persona” but a community.
How can you help them solve the problem?
With your business!
How do they know?
Because your content already helps them solve a part
of their problem or a related one.
Create value by being helpful!
Content Creation

10. It’s very rare that a single piece of content will
help you reach your goal.
It’s the whole of the content that reaches the
goal (or fails!)
The whole strategy!
What to measure

11. Do not publish your content only on your channels.
Look for partnerships!
• Be a guest blogger
• Participate in a podcast
• Talk at events
• Invite others, who have an audience aligned to yours, to
appear on your blog, podcast, event…
• Spread your content where your audience is (social
media, Medium, other blogs, Product Hunt…)
Time and channels

12. Content marketing is not about producing as much
content as possible.
Is about producing high quality content with a purpose
Content can be everything, from blog posts to software.
Find the content type you are better at producing and
aligned with your audience's interests.
Content must be useful.
It must solve a pain point of your audience.
Content must be linked with your business.
If your audience trusts your content, becoming customers
should be a natural choice.
Takeways

13. CONTENT MARKETING
2/3

14. • It’s a marketing strategy. So your content must serve your
goals. Did you set your goals?
• Content must be aligned with your business: it’s the bridge
that takes people with a problem to your solutions. You need
to use it to build trust and generate leads.
• Content is a generic word that encompasses everything from
short tweets to images to audio and video to software to free
games.
• It must be as spreadable as possible: you don’t want to get
people to your website, but content to potential clients and
potential clients to your business.
For Content Marketing you need content!

15. • What kind of content will be your main tool?
Long form blog posts
Infographics
Memes
Newsletters
Excel templates…
Concentrate on something that you can easily, repeatedly
and reliably create.
Remember: it must be top quality!
Format

16. • What will be your main theme?
Deep analysis, numbers and data crunching, radical
transparency, contrarian positions (“everybody thinks X,
but actually…”), forecasting and previsions, tutorials, news
from the trenches, tools, actionable suggestions,
identification of and solutions to common fears/pain
points…
Whatever your angle is, remember: your content must
clearly address and solve a common problem of your
audience and be immediately useful. For long term
usefulness, a turn key solution or a professional solution,
the answer is your business.
Angle

17. Where to get Ideas and Inspirations

18. Other sources of inspiration

19. Say NO to short, generic filler posts, infographics that
state the obvious, poorly thrown together videos or
podcasts, recycling of news from already available on
thousands of websites without adding nothing of yours.
It is better to produce nothing than to waste your
audience’s time with generic, poorly thought, not
useful content that you put out just to meet a quota.
Content is a commodity.
Good content is a solution to a problem. Differentiate
yourself from the competition by finding an unique angle,
solving a problem and building trust.
Before starting

20. When producing written content, do not get obsessed
with SEO but first learn to produce great content, then
think about on site and off site SEO techniques and
best practices.
A word about SEO

21. • If you use Wordpress or any modern CMS, part of the on
site SEO is managed by the CMS. Use a SEO plugin.
• Find the proper keywords by reading other industry sites
and their comments.
• Find keyword also by looking at the suggested searches on
Google.
• Open a Google AdWords account to use the Keyword
Plannner Tool.
Few suggestions about SEO - 1

22. • Use the Keyword in your title, opening paragraph,
summary and where appropriate – without overdoing!
• Do not write clickbaiting titles like “Entrepreneur X did
this and you can’t imagine what happened next!” Unless
your business is build on clickbaiting!
• If you mention a person or firm, it’s ok to write them
that you mentioned them and ask for a shout out.
• Spread your content on your appropriate social
networks.
Few suggestions about SEO - 2

23.  Your content should be as professional looking as possible. If you are not good
with writing, hire a copywriter. If you are not good with graphics, hire a designer.
 Your content should be differentiated from the competition's. Maybe your
analysis are deeper than anyone else’s. Or you explain difficult stuff using only
animated gifs from Monty Python shows. Find your unique approach to your
content.
 Your content should be useful. After consuming it, your audience must be able to
immediately act upon your words and make their life a little easier.
 Your content should build trust and establish you as an expert in your field.
Clickbaiting titles for generic blog posts do not build trust or picture you as an
expert.
 Your content must be a tool to reach your marketing goals. Produce content
aligned with these goals.
 Your content should invite your audience to become your customers. The content
should be aligned with your business (“do not focus on legal advice, if you are a
design firm!”)
Checklist time!

24. Content marketing is a marketing strategy, so it
should be build along the typical marketing
rules of
 Plan
 Execute
 Measure
You must set the goals you want to reach
with your content marketing strategy and
define how to track results obtained by your
content.
Measure your results

25. • Facebook likes (very weak), (better), positive comments
(better yet)
• Shares on other social networks – or shares on a social
network more relevant than Facebook for your business.
• On site comments.
• E-mail comments.
• Conversions (newsletter sign ups, downloads, business
inquiries)
• New/recurring visits on website.
• Time on site.
Of course, there should be a link between content
results and your marketing goals.
What results?

26. Content marketing is a marketing strategy that uses content
as a tool. What is your strategy?
Find sources of ideas: influencers, newspapers, social media.
Look for ideas outside your niche. And don’t forget direct
interactions with the people you want to create content for:
on comments, social networks, live meetings.
Do not waste time on low quality content. Create high
quality content useful for your audience and for your
business.
Measure your results. Define your KPI, how to monitor them
and how they indicate that you are reaching your goals.
Takeaways

27. CONTENT MARKETING
3/3

28. Your theme and unique selling proposition are the
basis of your publishing format:
• What are you going to talk about?
• In what style?
• With what voice?
• Using what tools?
This is the description of what you do
Publishing format

29. From the publishing format stems the publishing
plan, that we use for
• Creating relevant content
• Defining a style and a tone of voice: your
content’s identity
• Highlighting the key concepts we want to
communicate
• Planning your publishing calendar
Publishing plan

30. This is the description of your actual content :
“I curate a weekly podcast on business innovation, with
several entrepreneurs as guest speakers”. “I create
monthly infographics that show Internet Of Things
adoption across industries.”
Description of content

31. Publishing
Format
Themes Angle
Publishing Plan
Features
Creation, posting, community
management
Channels
Strategy
Operations
Design
Calendar
Publishing format and Publishing plan

32. Content marketing Strategy
Publishing
Format
Themes Angle
Publishing Plan
Features
Creation, posting, community management
Channels
Strategy
Operations
Design
Calendar
Remember the marketing strategy

33. Business Strategy
Content marketing Strategy
Publishing
Format
Themes Angle
Publishing Plan
Features
Creation, posting, community
management
Channels
Strategy
Operations
Design
Calendar
Remember the global strategy

34. Your life as a content marketer is simpler when
• You work less on producing content (so you can find
new themes, ideas, sources).
• You work smarter (so you can devote every minute of
your work in doing outstanding work, with less overhead
and wasted time as possible).
You should find the recipe that works the best for you to
get this results, but it will surely be made of
• Planning
• Automation
• Collaborations
How to simplify your life

35. Planning means that you – and your collaborators – know
who must do what and when.
Planning means that you know where to look for ideas
and what content you must produce – and why! – before
starting to produce content.
Planning means that you have a contingency plan for
every step of your plan. A few tools:
• Witheboard
• Post-it notes
• Shared Excel file
• Slack
• Trello
Planning

36. Automations means that you delegate to a computer as
much repetitive jobs as possible, so you can
concentrate on high added value activities, like creating
astounding content and disseminate it.
Use an RSS aggregator, Twitter lists, news discovery apps
to surface ideas and information.
Use shared folders, Dropbox, Google Docs to work on a
single version of your files and have them automatically
archived and versioned.
Use an automated action in Photoshop or a web app if
you always need images cropped to the same sizes.
Do not do any kind of manual, repetitive, dull job that
can be automated: you’ll save time and reduce errors.
Automation

37. Collaboration means two things.
Assemble a team that helps you producing great content.
Focus on what you are great at and delegate what you
cannot do. You can be a great writer, designer, website
admin. You can find the best guest bloggers or create a
wonderful network of relationships. But do not try to do
everything all the time.
Establish a network outside your team to help you create
and spread your content.
Find influencers with a recognized name in your industry
and invite them to be a guest in your videos.
Create a relationship with people that can upvote your
podcast on Product Hunt.
Have experts guest blog on your Medium channel.
Do not work alone.
Collaborations

38. Show some love to your archive
After having spent so much effort in creating awesome
content, it would be a big mistake to use it only once.
Archive material is useful in many ways.
Timeless content can be re issued as is or with minor
variations every time you have a reason to do so – think
about all those articles on daylight savings time.
Content that keeps attracting traffic can be shared on
different channels. Or can be the inspiration to create
more similar content.
Successful content can be shared again on your social
networks: for new followers it will be new content.
Do not forget your old content

39. Create a publishing format and a publishing plan. It will
make every phase of content creation easier and focused
on your business goals.
Automate as much as possible. Concentrate on your core
tasks and high value jobs, leave the rest to machines.
Create teams and networks. From content creation,
dissemination and managements every step will be easier.
Do not forget your archives. Old content can – and usually
will – be useful more than once.
Takeaways