1.
Reverse Engineering Successful
Content

2.
Most successful content comes
down to three things

3.
The story

4.
The data

5.
The production

6.
I lied

7.
An existing audience also helps

8.
When you don’t have one…

9.
Let’s be honest

10.
This content marketing
thing is bloody hard

11.
It looks so easy

12.
Brainstorm

13.
Choose an
idea

14.
Brief a designer

15.
Publish it

16.
Promote it

17.
Job done

18.
It’s not that straightforward

19.
“Let’s throw a guy
out of a spaceship”

20.
Brainstorming and idea
generation isn’t as easy for
most of us

21.
It needs restraints and
guidelines

22.
No, not all ideas are good ideas

23.
Doing it consistently is the
hardest part

24.
My approach to these issues

25.
I’m not a creative

26.
But he can build stuff

27.
We worked on our processes
from scratch

28.
I had a few strong influencers

29.
But at heart, I’m an SEO

30.
I like processes and reverse
engineering stuff

31.
Can I just reverse engineer
what others have done and do
it a little bit better?

32.
Yes*

33.
*Sometimes, ideas just fly and
you have no idea why or how

34.
*You only learn by actually
doing this stuff

35.
The whole process
is actually really big

36.
I’m going to focus on a specific
part of the process

37.
Feeding strong research into
your brainstorming / idea
generation stage

38.
Our goal is to create a brief for
everyone involved in the
brainstorm…

39.
…that contains themes, data,
visuals, guidelines and
restraints

40.
The process

41.
Find the stories / themes

42.
Start here

43.
Read this post for the basics
https://moz.com/blog/generate-content-ideas-using-buzzsumo-and-apis

44.
Look at (content) competitors

45.
Scan the results

46.
Look for the trends

47.
Look for the trends

48.
It may be due (partly at least)
to Nomadic Matt having
a large existing audience

49.
Run several competitors together

50.
You can also use keywords

51.
Export to CSV

52.
Then run through URL Profiler
http://urlprofiler.com/

53.
Some pivot table magic…

54.
Find the most linked to domains

55.
Do a deeper dive for more insights

56.
Are long-form content ideas good?

57.
What content types work well?

58.
Paste the titles into a word cloud
http://www.wordle.net/create

59.
Scan this list in your CSV

60.
Can I do any of them better?
(this could be a restraint)

61.
Can I update any of
them for 2016?
(this could be an opportunity)

62.
Add all of this to your
brainstorming brief

63.
http://epicbeat.epictions.com/

64.
http://huballin.com/

65.
http://huballin.com/

66.
https://www.brandtale.com/

67.
https://www.brandtale.com/

68.
https://www.brandtale.com/

69.
Find data sources

70.
Know what’s available

71.
Know what’s available

72.
http://www.statista.com/search/?q=travel%20destinations

73.
Can you get your own data?

74.
Try a little bit

75.
This could be a restraint (£££)

76.
Add all of this to your
brainstorming brief

77.
Find visuals

78.
Don’t overthink this

79.
Can I do it just a bit better?
(this could be a restraint
or an opportunity)

80.
Has it been linked to?

81.
Link

82.
Yep

83.
Print and add to the
brainstorming brief

84.
One final tip on
setting expectations

85.
“I want 10,000 Facebook Likes
and 500 Links per content
piece”

86.
Fairly unlikely…

87.
A takeaway for you…
www.aira.net/brainstorm

88.
Get in touch if you have questions!
paddy@aira.net