It's no secret that cats rule the internet; however, not every web asset can leverage these cyber stars. This presentation shares the 6 steps needed to build and optimize a successful content marketing program.

1. Beyond Cats:
The Basics of Digital Content Marketing
@DeirdreWalsh

2. Education – The University of Texas
Bachelor of Science in Public Relations
Minors in English and Business
Public Relations
Agency & Corporate PR
HP, Allstate, National Instruments
Looking Ahead:
Joining Silicon Labs as Director of Corporate Marketing
in April 2015
Social Marketing
Built 1st online community in 2006 with 150k members
Expanded to use all social technologies
Measurable business impact
Content & Digital Marketing
Integration and experience across social, web, email
Strategic use of content
My Career Path

3. Goals of Today
• Purrrfect understanding of content marketing
• Actionable checklist for building a success program

4. Content Marketing
Defined
“A strategic marketing approach focused
on creating and distributing valuable,
relevant, and consistent content to
attract and retain a clearly-defined
audience — and, ultimately, to drive
profitable customer action.”
~Content Marketing Institute

5. Website Conversion Rate is 6X
Higher for Those Adopting
Content Marketing (2.9% vs. .5%)
~Aberdeen Group, 2014
78% of CMOs see Content
as the Future of Marketing
~Demand Metric, 2014
48% of Marketers Support 3 to 5 Buying Stages
with Dedicated Content ~LinkedIn Technology
Marketing Community

6. The Challenge
We know the best way to engage buyers and pull them through the funnel is
with educational, valuable content that addresses their concerns and
interests. However, understanding the importance of content and
executing a streamlined strategy are two very different things.
Average b2b spends 28% of budget on content marketing. ~CMI
60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused.
~SiriusDecisions

7. The Solution
Build an approach and process that enables us to create and scale valuable
content that aligns with the needs of the organization and appeals to our
audiences.

8. Business: Understand your company’s key
business and marketing goals (in terms of
sales, brand awareness, lead generation,
web traffic, engagement, or other metrics).
Audience: Document goals depending on
stage of their journey, role, pain points, etc.
• Prospects: information, find experts
• New Customer: started, proficiency, help
• Advanced Customer: heard, rewarded,
famous
Then, document a strategic plan for
using content to impact these goals.
1. Define Objectives.

9. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
The board gathers to discuss the big themes and
initiatives for upcoming month, and all
representatives share the content needs, projects,
and ideas from their departments. Getting these
stakeholders together helps
• break down the silos
• open up communication
• create consistency throughout user
experience.
• represents every team’s interests
• speed up process
• get key decisions made quickly
• meet real business and user goals
Editorial)Board)
Managing)Editor)
Marke0ng)
Leadership)
Pillar)
Representa0ves)
Channel)
Representa0ves)
Experts,)Writers,)
Editors)
Create cross-functional, editorial board.

10. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
1.Ed-board ideas are organized into strategic
campaigns based on themes, product
updates, and events.
2.The Managing Editor and the content
specialists plan major assets called
“anchors” to support one or multiple
campaigns across departments.
3.Each department maps how it will reuse
content anchor by breaking them into
multiple derivative assets.
4.Once published, each department pushes
these content assets through distribution
channels reaching buyers at all stages of
funnel.
Identify content “anchors.”

11. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
Top of Funnel: Web, PR and Social Teams
• Drive traffic to website and community and convert visitors into leads
• Provide channels with both large and derivative assets they can repurpose
• Ex: blog posts, articles, infographics, presentations, videos, tweets, updates
Middle of Funnel: Marketing and Demand Generation Teams
• Nurture contacts
• Ex: Large assets, email campaigns, blog posts, videos, articles within emails
Bottom of Funnel: Sales Team
• Drive new business
• Content is educational and product-centric
• Case studies, testimonials, product overviews, competitive reviews
Post-Sale: Customer Marketing
• Have successful, happy customers
• Instead of pushing information on an awesome new feature, provide customers with content
that will help them thrive and inspire them to do more.
Align functions to funnel.

12. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
Create content workflow process.

13. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
• Product managers and marketing do the majority of the digital writing today.
They are already juggling so many balls, the time and effort they devote to
crafting copy is decreasing.
• This fact is leading forward-thinking marketers to seek out either experienced
content writers or outsource writing to agencies or marketplaces that
specialize in writing or creating content.
Determine Resources.
58 percent of B2B marketers plan to increase their content
marketing budgets in the next year (Forbes)

14. 2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
Create tools and templates, including calendars and project briefs.

15. 3. Create. Create. Create.
Content can’t and shouldn’t ever
be perfect. Instead, brands
should view it as a work in
progress, ever-evolving, and
iterative. It should evolve as the
audience interacts and
comments. It should be human
and authentic.
~ Christine Dobbin, digital
strategist

16. 3. Create. Create. Create.
• Size of Content (snackable vs. long form)
• At the opposite end of the spectrum from anchors you have tweets, 6-
second Vines, Snapchats, Whisper secrets, small infographics, etc. These
continue to grow at breakneck speeds.
• Shareablity
• A recent study by Buzzsumo
showed that people are far more
likely to share lengthy, in-depth
content. Part of this is for SEO
purposes–Google favors posts
over 2,000 word on its front page–
and partly because consumers are
sick of the same regurgitated 500-
word pieces.

17. 3. Create. Create. Create.
• Explore new methods of communication - visual, slideshare storytelling, even
meerkat has a place in B2B.

18. 4. Publish and Manage.
1. Know the role of each channel.
2. Have a strong editorial calendar.
3. Have a consistent brand voice as well as individual thought leaders.
The basics.

19. 4. Publish and Manage.
1. Be like Buzzfeed - end clickbait!
2. Go mobile.
3. Make LinkedIn your BFF. It wants to be THE destination for online marketing
for professionals (ie. Bizo acquisition).
4. Engage with influencers.
5. Focus on context.
"Context’s untapped opportunity is to get an extremely granular understanding of customers, then to anticipate their
needs, wants, affinities, and expectations and develop unique insights to power better marketing across all devices,
channels, localities, and brand experiences.
Context, in other words, takes not only the “who” into account, but also the when, where, why, and how.
Simply put — it’s deeper targeting and more on-point messaging."
Rebecca Lieb
Advanced tactics.

20. 5. Promote your content. ($$$)
• Use known channels - PR, advertising, social.
• Think holistically about the experience (ie. twitter
and linkedin website cards).
Social Media has THE HIGHEST win
rate of any marketing channel.
Jive Community was third largest
source of net new names in 2014.
Jive Case Study

21. 6. Measure and Optimize.
• GOAL: measure content production vs. performance
“ONLY
27%
of
B2B
Marketers
say
they
are
effec8vely
tracking
content
u8liza8on
metrics.”
SiriusDecisions
Produc'on:
manufacturing
assets
from
raw
ideas
Number
of
assets
produced
Types
of
content
produced
Content
produced
by
author
Reputa'on:
sen1ment
across
key
channels
Score
of
community,
social
media
and
public
rela9ons
Reach:
extent
to
which
audience
views
the
content
Traffic
data
(visits,
views,
search,
referrals)
Number
of
subscribers/community
members/social
network
size
Rela'onships:
reading,
downloading,
sharing,
commen1ng,
sending,
etc.
Number
of
engagements
Revenue:
impact
of
content
on
business
outcomes
Number
of
net
new
names

22. 6. Measure and Optimize.
Facebook:)Marke&ng)Content)Exceeds)Expecta&ons)
Customers
11% Follower
Engagement
3%
Industry
37%
Jive Promo
48%
Office Hero
1%
BRAND ACTIVITY BY TOPIC
Customers
12%
Follower
Engagement
0%
Industry
28%Jive Promo
60%
Office Hero
0%
ENGAGEMENT BY TOPIC
Twi$er:(Followers(Want(Industry(Exper4se(
Office hero
7%
Jive Promo
33%
Industry
25%
Follower
Engagement
25%
Customer
10%
BRAND ACTIVITY BY TOPIC
Office hero
0%
Jive Promo
38%
Industry
40%
Follower
Engagement
10%
Customer
12%
ENGAGEMENT BY TOPIC

23. Checklist for Content Success
• Define Objectives.
• Get Your S*!t Together Internally.
• Create. Create. Create.
• Publish and Promote.
• Measure and Optimize.

24. Stay connected
about.me/deirdrewalsh