Content Marketing 4 Startups
1. Why content marketing
2. What is content marketing
3. Distro channels
4.Content vs. social
5. Content examples
6. How to get more mileage
7. 18 content ideas
11. ● Owned platform / center of gravity
● Not just brand awareness but demand generation
● Long form / depth vs. short form
● Further along in conversion funnel
CONTENT helps with all of these:
Acquisition -> lead nurturing -> conversion ->engagement/retention
-> upsell -> net promoter
CONTENT vs SOCIAL
@susanfsu | susan@500.co
15. SOURCING
Buzzsumo
Keyword planner / keyword tools
Moz
Reddit
Twitter advanced search
CREATE CONTENT THAT PEOPLE
ARE ALREADY LOOKING FOR (IT’S NOT ABOUT
YOU)
16. CONTENT MARKETING & SEO
Content marketing = great for SEO?
Duplicate content --> higher authority site gets cred
Use the words your audience uses (and searches)
Tags & link out!
17. THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
1. Take a stand on a controversial issue
2. Make a prediction related to your marketplace
3. Industry trends commentary
4. Side by side comparison of companies that are in a lateral or complementary category
SOLVING CUSTOMER PROBLEMS
5. How to
6. Case study
7. 7 ways to solve X
8. Mythbusting
SOCIAL PROOF
9. Inspirational success story
BELONGING
10. What they don’t want you to know
11. 7 under the radar ways to [ACHIEVE X] we learned from interviewing top performers
CULTURE AND VALUES
12. Small town hero story
13. What we’re NOT
14. Feature the team
15. Our stand on X (current event — moral stand / ideals)
COMPETITORS
16. Interview a competitor
17. Analyze a competitor campaign
18. Comparison chart
@susanfsu | susan@500.co
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FREE TRAFFIC. YOU EITHER PAY WITH $ OR WITH TIME
Content marketing is an effective alternative to paid acquisition. It works for both lead acquisition and for lead nurturing, but it takes TIME. (Ads take time too…)
It takes TIME to make. It takes TIME to distribute, and it often takes TIME to pay off.
Content marketing isn’t just about the content.
Once you’ve created great, shareable, market-directed content, you’re only HALFWAY there.
The second HALF of content marketing is… marketing. How you distribute your content will greatly affect its effective for you.
These are just a few examples of the many TYPES of content you can use for content marketing.
But content marketing doesn’t stop at content creation.
There are tons of places and ways you can distribute your content. From your company’s site, to your own personal site, to print, to major social and ecommerce channels.
What’s the difference between content and social media marketing? Aren’t tweets content?
They are, but the main difference has to do with your content’s center of gravity, and the function it’s performing
There are other differences too. Social is typically short form, whereas content marketing works best when it’s long form.
Social is part of inbound, part of acquisition and discovery.
Although it can also be part of discovery, content marketing also works really well further along in the conversion funnel -- to nurture your leads towards purchase.
“content marketing is channel-agnostic. That means that content marketers should be looking at ALL available channels to engage with customers… print, in-person, and online (including mobile). The outstanding Ritz Carlton magazine, placed in hotel rooms, does not have anything to do with being found; neither does the amazing LEGO Club magazine, which has been produced in print for over 30 years (I received the original Brick Kicks magazine back in the 80s). LEGO Club magazine is not inbound marketing.”
All this said, there is a lot of overlap. Social helps distribute your content marketing, and social can prompt you to create new formats to repurpose your content marketing, thus expanding your content.
Ok so content marketing is a lot of work. What to do? A common mistake businesses make is to think that you need to come up with 1001 brilliant content ideas and gimmicks. This is simply wrong.
Columnize to get more mileage out of your content ideas.
CONTENT CHECKLIST
I used to call this Content 7 in 1. But now I’ve had to change it to X in 1 because there are simply so many ways you can repurpose your content.
Comments, replies, page views, shares, likes, signups, conversions. Measure what matters -- to YOU, and key metrics depends on where and how you’re using your content marketing.
Reverse engineer what works. Content topic sourcing is a lot like keyword research for SEO. Twitter advanced search, buzzsumo, reddit, keyword planner. See what gets traffic and shares, use the phrases and words of people who are sharing it, and then go to those people and let them know you’ve created something relevant to them.
Do you get punished by Google for having your content syndicated / published to different places?
The short answer is, you won’t get punished but you may not get full technical credit.
While syndication and guest posting can in general be a good way to expand your reach and authority, you should know that the higher authority site will be the one to get the cred.
Unless you’re able to convince the publishing site to place a Rel=Canonical tag on their page indicating to google search engines that this content is the same as your original, the higher authority site will be the one to benefit, even if you published first.
You can also ask the publishing site to place a NO INDEX tag (which means they tell google to not index them for keywords in that article). Third best option, publishing site links to your original post (not your home page).
If they are unwilling to do any of the above (other than linking back to your homepage), you do it anyway if the publisher has REALLY high visibility. You won’t get any technical credit from Google, but you will still get visibility from readers clicking through to your homepage -- think: The New York Times!
CONTENT IDEAS.
Golden rule -- CTA
Tip -- Columnize