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Everything You Need to Know About Content Marketing
- 1. Everything You Need to Know About Content Marketing
- 2. Webinar Information • This is being recorded, and the video will be uploaded to our website afterwards. • This is an interactive webinar, so it is OK to ask questions during the presentation. • At the end of the webinar, we will have 10-15 minutes of Q&A, so any questions you ask will be answered then.
- 3. About Point It • Launched in April 2002 • Seattle’s largest independent search marketing firm • SEM, SEO, Web Design/Dev, Marketing Automation • $30m in managed media/yr • Servicing clients across all verticals and revenue models
- 4. So, What Is Content Marketing?
- 5. Why – How – What http://bit.ly/WhyHowWhat
- 6. Potential Content Formats • Blog Posts • Video • Infographics • Websites • Images • Web Pages • Audio/Podcasts • Tools • Interviews • Events
- 7. It’s not about virality Quality >
- 8. Content Marketing + Well Executed = Holy
- 9. Know Your Assets • Wheelbarrow • Cloak • Giant • Genius • Semi-crazy sword-wielding fatherless Spaniard
- 10. Who’s Your Audience? Where are
- 11. Define Success
- 12. Who Can Succeed With Content Marketing? ANYON Yes, even you over there, with the boring
- 26. Build – Measure –
- 27. How to Spread Your Content
- 28. Use Ads to Support Content Marketing • StumbleUpon Ads • Google AdWords • LinkedIn Ads • Bing Ads • Facebook Ads • Twitter Ads • Display Networks • Retargeting
- 29. If you don’t build it… …they WON’T
- 30. Q&A Time! Ask Away Sam McRoberts Tyler Tanigawa Director of SEO Sr. Client SamM@PointIt.c Manager om TylerT@PointIt.c @Sams_Antics om @TylerTanigawa http://www.pointit.com/resources/webinars-
Editor's Notes
- SAM:Content marketing really isn’t terribly complex. I’ve always firmly believed that if you understand your audience well enough, virality can be engineered…but it requires that you do the legwork upfront to know your audience, to learn what appeals to them on a deep emotional level, to find who the influencers are for your audience, and to determine how best to reach them and seed your content. Proper previous planning and all that.Content marketing isn’t about selling, at least not directly. It’s about connecting with your audience on an emotional level, about making their lives better in some small way.Now, I’d like to say that there isn’t somegreat secret that will grant your content marketing efforts with the Midas touch of virality…but really there is :)
- SAM:If there is a secret to content marketing, this is it. The man on the right is Simon Sinek, and this is what he refers to as The Golden Circle, the key to crafting a remarkable message. If you’ve never heard of Simon or The Golden Circle, you’re missing out. He gave a brilliant TEDx talk a few years back that talks about this, which you can watch with this Bit.ly link.When it comes to Content Marketing, and really any form of marketing or branding for that matter, first impressions and appearance matter enormously. The human brain makes up its mind in a matter of seconds, so that’s all you have to plant the hook.The vast majority of people out there respond to things emotionally, long before logic sets in, so content marketing that consists of a nice logical list of why your widget or service is great does you absolutely no good…that’s the WHAT, the last thing you should bring up.Likewise, explaining how your widget or service works also shouldn’t be your first step. It’s an important second step, but a poor first impression. That’s the HOW.Creating great content is about appealing to people on an emotional level, and to do that, you need to start with WHY. Why should anyone care about your content? What does it do for the people who encounter it? Does it make them happy? Does it make them laugh? Does it make them smarter, or richer, or improve their lives in some way? If the answer is no, then your content will fail, and probably shouldn’t be built in the first place. The world has enough crap content…good enough doesn’t cut it anymore. Remember, start with WHY.
- TYLER:So, what are the main content types?There are a lot of different content types out there that could be used as your content marketing vehicle.The most popular are blog posts. One company that has based its business around incredible blog posts is SEOmoz. They are creating interesting, well developed, and well researched content daily, that attracts thousands of visitors. Even better, they’re getting others in the industry to write their content for them.Videos are another incredible content marketing tool. Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube. A Forbes study showed that 59% of Senior Executives preferred to watch videos instead of reading text. This shows that there are demographics out there that prefer videos – so use them.Infographics, memes, or other images are also great content marketing tools.Another content type is your own website. You can add new pages or change your current pages to be more interactive and more interesting - try adding some cool functionality or even a new web tool and watch visits and inbound links increase!Creating audio tracks or podcasts can be an excellent form of content as there are online users that prefer to listen to information rather than read text or watch a video.Conducting interviews with knowledgeable people in your space can draw a lot of attention, traffic, authority and positive sentiment.Keep in mind, that your content does not have to be online - they can be offline too. You can throw events that will generate a buzz for your business, you can do radio ads or billboards, or you can even do something that the Embassy Suites did, where they creatively redesigned their Do Not Disturb door hangars to say “Constructing a pillow fort. Come back later.” Dozens of guests saw these and were compelled to take a picture of these door hangars and post them online - giving their brand awareness, visibilty, and positive sentiment. The famous Google puzzle billboard is also a great example of using offline content marketing. And you can see that Kevin Mitnick, a famous hacker and security expert, has taken his business card into the realm of content marketing. How cool is that?
- TYLER:Its important to remember that virality isn’t just about getting the most amount of views that you can. Its more about targeting your content to the right people.Gangnam Style was one of the biggest viral hits in the past year. It got over a billion views, but their views were from every single type of demographic on the planet. A business would want to aim for that same type of interesting/funny content, but with their target audience in mind. Just like website visits, its way better to get a million targeted views, than a billion random ones.
- SAM:Content marketing, when properly executed, really is the holy grail of marketing. Nothing else can trigger the reaction you want from your audience more efficiently or effectively.Great content can make you happy. Great content can make you cry. It can make you angry, make you think, make you laugh. When content triggers an emotional response, the brain takes that information and makes a connection. A neural pathway is formed. Then, the next time your brand is encountered, the brain surfaces the feelings you felt the last time you encountered that brand.This is why a positive brand experience is key. Once the brain makes up its mind, it’s very hard to change.By going through the content marketing process the right way, you can make sure that you create the right type of content for your audience.Before you start though, you’re going to need a few things.
- SAM:First, you need to know what you have to work with. What assets are at your disposal? I’m a big Princess Bride fan, and thinking about content marketing and resources makes me think of this scene in the movie. Wesley could barely walk, and yet he needed to storm a castle with a locked gate guarded by 60 men. Tricky, to say the least.Maybe you don’t need a giant and a crazy Spaniard with a sword, but you’re going to need resources to execute any content marketing effort, and perhaps rounding up resources in your business might seem like a similar challenge?At the very least, you’ll need the ability to create content in one of the formats previously mentioned. That could require writing skills, coding skills, photography skills, videography skills, design skills…figure out what you want to create, and then determine if you have the resources to create it…if you’re missing some needed resources, then you’ll need to figure out how to get those resources or do without.Getting resources might be the hardest part of content marketing, or it might be the easiest. Every business is different, but your resources will dictate what content you can create, so sort this out first.
- TYLER:So, how do you know who your audience is and where they are?You can’t aim for everyone – that’s not a strategy. To execute a content marketing strategy, you need to know who you want to target. The good news is that there are a ton of tools and resources available to determine who your ideal audience is. The first step is always to start with your own company data – dive into your analytics and see where your traffic is coming from, look into your CRM software and your internal databases.Now expand. Ask yourself:Who should I send my content to?Who, out there, would share my content?Where do my targets spend their time? Answer these questions and stick to them as your rubric. Don’t worry about the concept as much, at this stage, that will come only after you thoroughly understand your audience and where you can reach them.
- TYLER:No content marketing effort should begin until you’ve defined what success looks like – as what gets measured gets managed.Figure out your KPIs, and tie those KPI’s to something that impacts the bottom line.Track everything. Use Google Analytics, bit.ly, Facebook Insights, or Kissmetrics. If success is a phone call, have call tracking in place. If your content is direct mail - make sure you track the leads coming from the mailer using a special phone number for call tracking, a special URL for tracking website visits, or using unique coupon codes.If you create a piece of content, you should be able to track its impact, and how it has added value to your business.
- SAM:I was attending an SEO-centric networking event recently, and someone in the audience said “Well, what about content for boring niches? I have a client that makes lawn mowers, what could I possibly create for them that would be worth sharing?”I jumped in and said, “Really? The possibilities are endless! You could use their lawnmowers to write crazy messages in lawns or sports fields, and record the process with time-lapse video, speed it up, and put it on YouTube. You could use lawnmowers to cut crop circles, and record those and put them on YouTube (and put out press releases from the farmer who’s field the crop circles appeared in, and link to the YouTube videos from the PR). You could get a field, modify some lawnmowers to be remotely driven, and then run a contest that lets the winner write a message in the field by remotely controlling the lawnmowers via website (maybe you could partner with a company like Sphero to do this). You could soup up some of their lawnmowers and have them race. You could bundle lawnmower sales in select cities with TaskRabbit credits, to have people come mow your lawn for you with your new mower.”I came up with this list on the fly. Give me a 30-60 minute brainstorming session with a few people, and I could have dozens of cool ideas for any industry.I firmly believe that any industry can create great content, you just need to get a creative mind behind the project.
- TYLER:One of the greatest recent content marketing campaigns was Felix Baumgartner basejumping from the Earth’s stratosphere for Red Bull’s Stratos mission.The Red Bull’s live cast was their content that they were marketing and it was, hands down, one of the coolest and most unique marketing campaigns and gave Red Bull a lot of visibility and a lot of on and offline mentions. Granted, this sort of stunt is outside the reach of the average company, but this gives you an example of what a free thinking company will do and what is possible.
- SAM:These guys bootstrapped their own company before taking funding, and this viral video only cost $4,500 to make. With almost 10 million views, and significant growth post-video, this was a fantastic use of marketing dollars. It’s certainly edgy, but it quickly and effectively appeals to their target market.
- SAM:The company Blend-Tec did something very similar with their Will It Blend videos. The cost to create their first video was like $500, and each subsequent video has been relatively inexpensive.The story behind this is actually really cool: Tell George Wright storyTheir YouTube channel now has over 550,000 subscribers, and they’ve had over 200 million views to their videos. That is some serious reach, and anyone who has seen those videos and who needs to buy a blender is definitely going to remember this company.They did a great job of making their product the star of the show, without being overly commercial about it.
- SAM:If you aren’t already familiar with the Old Spice “Smell like a man, man.” videos, go watch them. These videos would probably be considered one of the greatest content marketing efforts, ever. Like the Dollar Shave Club video, the cost to make each video was relatively low, and the response has been phenomenal.These have spawned many spoofs, memes, and have generally amassed a TON of media coverage.One of the coolest parts of this was the real-time aspect. The ability to interact on Twitter with the brand, and have them create videos addressing your comments and posting those up on the fly, was genius.
- TYLER:GoPro, the versatile camera company, has come up with a simple and effective content marketing strategy. They created an amazing product that people can use anywhere, and had their users create their viral content for them.At least one GoPro video is tagged, titled and uploaded to YouTube every minute. Since GoPro users are primarily adrenaline junkies and people who are active, the content they record is usually quite amazing and engaging, which in turn, adds to its virality. I have seen GoPro videos of surfers riding on waves, referees officiating major soccer matches, and soldiers in Afghanistan in gun fights. All of it is incredible content that is then associated with the GoPro brand.Content marketing doesn’t have to mean that you create the content yourself, let your consumers who love your products, market it and spread the word.
- SAM:Story behind the SEOmoz MozCation contest, my participation, all of the links and social shares, etc.This one page has 268 inbound links, 814 tweets mentioned this specific URL, and there were thousands and thousands of other brand mentions associated with these events, along with a ton of other content created as part of this contest.It went so well that first year, that they held another contest the following year. Events can be one of the best ways to create lots of content quickly and relatively cost effectively.
- TYLER:TheMandloys Content Marketing Guide is really cool.This company has created this interactive, fun guide that uses a variety of coding tactics to display their content in a creative way. Building content like this on your site can be an effective way to build links, attract traffic, and garner press mentions. It can also be a great portfolio piece, leading to additional business.
- TYLER:This is an example of yet another example of an awesomeweb page, that is almost like an interactive infographic, using a variety of coding tactics to display interesting content in a creative way. Best of all, they built a page that mentions some of the biggest brands out there– companies that Seer Interactive would certainly love to have as clients. By building this page, they’ve drawn the attention of these companies and have shown the type of quality and creative work they can do.When it comes to content marketing, creativity can mean BIG money. All you need is a concise-formulated strategy and careful execution.
- SAM:I heard this story a few months back from Justin Briggs, the Senior Marketing Manager at Big Fish.Amanda Hemmons, the daughter of Big Fish Games’ Portuguese language editor popped up on an email chain because her art was featured on the Huffington Post, where she turned the characters from the movie Avengers into girls dresses.When asked, she said she wanted to turn characters like Thor and Hulk into dresses because “comic books and action movies are generally made by men, for men; the fact that women like them too is apparently incidental.” Big Fish has featured plenty of heroines like Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie in their games, but most traditional retro and console video games heroes have been primarily male. They wondered what those iconic characters & color combos would look like as female fashion statements. Maybe next time the major publishers will remember to include a character or two for the girls! Here is the first set of amazing sketches she sent to Big Fish.This is AWESOME. It’s really, really hard to go wrong with creative content that leverages pop culture in an appealing way. Best of all, they built something that appeals to their target market (female gamers). Talk about perfect content marketing!
- TYLER:Although Google has come out and said that infographics have become too spammy as of late, a well-made infographic can still be phenomenally effective. With a well-made infographic you can expect to draw links, press mentions, referral traffic and enhance branding. Infographicscan be expensive and can be somewhat a shot in the dark, so make sure that you have a captivating concept and an incredible unique design that will incite viewers to want to share it.In this example, REI has made an infographic that indirectly encourages people to buy their products. Each infographic includes things you can buy at REI, presented in a creative – helpful way. They appeal to their target audience, and are backed bya very effective marketing machine that knows how to distribute content effectively.After you have created your amazing infographic - distribution is key. Get it in front of the right people and the influencers in your space that have a track record of sharing great content.
- SAM:After seeing how well the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO has done (17,973 external links just to the Beginner’s Guide page on SEOmoz, not to mention a mind boggling amount of traffic over the years), and knowing that no such resource existed for advanced SEO tactics, Neil Patel decided to create one.Neil’s guide, which has been up for just 2 months, has already received 3,404 links, so it’s off to a fantastic start. If you could build one piece of content that could generate thousands upon thousands of relevant links and a significant amount of relevant traffic…wouldn’t you?The idea for an SEO guide wasn’t original, and didn’t need to be. It filled a need for the right community.
- TYLER:Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team, and he often puts up videos answering questions that people have asked him.The ShortCutts.com is a simple yet incredibly awesome content marketing piece, that has taken Matt Cutts’ videos and trimmed them down to just the answers to the questions, so that viewers don’t have to sit through lengthy filler.The really cool thing about this site that makes it mentionable, is that you have the ability to search by the color of Matt’s shirt that he wore in the video.The insight you can gain from this website is that content marketing doesn’t even have to involve coming up with some great new piece of information…it can be as simple as taking existing information and packaging it in a new, useful, and creative way.
- SAM:If you think you have a boring industry, a space where you just can’t possibly do anything creative…you might be surprised.What could possibly be more boring than plumbing and sanitation? And yet, here you have a great page coded in a cool way that conveys a lot of interesting and in some cases gut wrenching information. It’s well made, memorable, and worth sharing. A slam dunk from a content marketing perspective.
- SAM:I’m a fan of the book The Lean Startup. Not all of it, but lots of it. It’s a smart book, and if you’ve never read it and you’re involved with building things, go read it.Content marketing is not a one-and-done sort of activity. There are no Showtime rotisserie here, no set it and forget it. If you’re going to do content marketing the right way, it’s going to be a process. You’re going to need to build something, measure it’s success, learn from your successes and failures, and then start the process over again.When you first get started, you want to go through this cycle as quickly as possible until you determine exactly what works for your audience. It might help to think of it in cooking terms…you’re not looking for one good recipe, but for reliable ingredients that you can use in many different recipes. When you’ve had a couple of solid successes in a row, you’re probably on the right track for your space.
- TYLER:You may ask yourself, now that I have created this incredible piece of sharable content, how do I get people to see it?There are a ton of incredible mediums that you can use.Of course, there’s your own websiteThere’s ScribdYouTubeLinkedinFacebookTwitterPinterestInstagramSlideshareGoogle +RedditAnd much more!Figure out where your target is,how they get their information and spread your content through those sources.
- SAM:Paid advertising can be a GREAT way to seed your content marketing efforts. Take infographics for example; one of the best ways to seed an infographic is by running some StumbleUpon ads. If your content is great, it can easily take off from there.Which advertising platform you use to support and distribute your content will depend largely on your audience and what you’re trying to accomplish.If the content that you are creating is going to live on your website, I very, very strongly recommend that you run a retargeting campaign. That way, even brief visits to your content will enable you to get in front of those people again. If you do this, tailor your creative to mesh well with your content that they saw and your brand as well, a clean blend of the two.If you’re trying to decide what to budget towards this piece of content marketing, I’d personally recommend at least 50/50. Spend half your budget on creating great content, and the other half on making sure the right people see it. The best content in the world is utterly worthless if people don’t see it, yet average content can still do well if marketed effectively. Make sure you have a distribution budget in addition to your creation budget.
- SAM:It’s really this simple. If you don’t build great content, something above and beyond what others in your space are doing, the people or customers that you hope and dream will come WON’T come. You have to take risks, build things, and maybe be just a little bit crazy.No risk, no reward. Great risks, great rewards.We live in a content driven world. The brain runs on content, it gobbles it up. The better the content, the more appealing it is to the brain.