Tag Archives: content marketing strategy

Make today your new day

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I was recently invited by the team at Digital DNA to contribute a guest blog in advance of the upcoming conference in Belfast on 8th June 2016.

The focus for my article was the opportunity for us as marketers to seize the new opportunity that exists for us to not only be content producers but also to be the distribution channel in this new digital world.

You can read the full post on the DigitalDNA website.

You can read my thoughts on the DigitalDNA conference here – penned after a previous visit.

 

How to crack the ‘content’ in content marketing

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For almost all the marketers I speak to the single biggest obstacle to maximising the opportunity that content marketing presents is the content bit.

It’s not that we don’t have the content ideas or that we don’t understand the principles of a good content marketing strategy. It’s quite simply finding the time to produce all of the new content that you believe prospects and existing customers will find interesting and / or useful.

Producing this valuable, helpful and informative content takes time. Before we go any further it’s important that I point out that I haven’t found a magic formula for producing new content at the speed we would all like to.

Instead, I have concluded that there is a far easier way to get the content in your content marketing strategy to work harder for you.

Sound like a plan? Let me explain:

As I’ve already said – producing good content takes time. After spending this time we unfortunately don’t maximise the benefit to be extracted from all that hard work.

I’m sure that you have on many occasions (as I have) upon completing your latest content project simply posted it on your chosen social channels, added it to your website and targeted relevant online discussion groups only to swiftly move on to the development of your next content project.

By doing this you are not maximising the potential for your content to generate leads, encourage attendance at your event, secure downloads for your white paper – whatever your specific objectives may be.

You worked really hard developing that content – so make the most of the opportunity it presents.

Only a very small proportion of your social audience will see your content if you only post it once. By using one of the many social scheduling tools and re-posting across different channels at different times you will greatly increase the exposure that your content gets.

It’s only then that you can be sure that you are extracting maximum value from the hard work you put in to developing the content in the first place.

It’s also a great way to conduct some live research – change the headlines, choose different images, post at different times of the day.

By doing this and studying your analytics you’ll develop a new awareness of what content works best, in what place and at what time.

You’ll then be in a position to decide which of your many ideas for new content will best help you to achieve your goals.

You’ll then find that all the content you develop starts working harder for you.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that loads of content is all you need for a successful content marketing strategy.

What you really need is useful, helpful and informative content from which you extract maximum value.

I’m as guilty as anyone of being tempted by the exciting distraction of shiny new content – just remember that a lot of your existing content is new to an awful lot of people who haven’t yet been exposed to it.

The 3 C’s of a successful content marketing strategy

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We’re all producing new content on a daily basis which we hope will be eagerly consumed by customers. This involves the distribution of this content to our target media – both online and offline so what is it that will get our content selected for publishing?

The Chartered Institute of Marketing in Ireland (CIM) held an event in Malmaison Belfast today which sought to address this very issue and one of the contributors was Gavin Walker. Editor, Business First of the Business First publication. As the gatekeeper who is in ultimate control of whether our content gets the airtime we desire when Gavin (or others holding editorial positions) speaks it’s worth listening.

What I took away from Gavin’s presentation was the 3 c’s to a successful content marketing strategy:

  1. Context
  2. Content
  3. Conversations

Context in content marketing1 – Context

The first point in relation to context refers not to the subject matter of your material but instead focuses on the infrastructure and resources available to the majority of publications that we target.

Gone are the days when editorial teams are staffed with an army of willing copywriters and journalists who will have either the time or the inclination to redraft your content to make it suitable for publication.

Therefore, in order to maximise the opportunity for your content to get published you need to think about how it will be formatted.

The copy that you send to your target media will have a much greater chance of success if it can be lifted and placed with minimal additional editing.

This requires you to make sure that your copy does not make unsubstantiated claims about how good your product, service or company is.

A simple way to overcome this is to first write about yourself in the third person. Construct your copy as if it is being put together by an impartial journalist – this ensures a focus on the facts and the key messages you want to get across and avoids it reading like a paid for advertorial (which won’t get published – unless you’re paying for it).

Another key element of context is an understanding of where the content will be published.

Is it for a magazine or newspaper or is it for an online publication?

It’s increasingly likely that it’s for both as most print publications will have a website as well.

If the content you’re sending is specifically for print or online then specify this within the release.

A technical article or detailed project case study is probably best suited to a print publication where people will most likely give your content some more time.

A release about the event you’re hosting, a new product launch, new appointments may be best suited to the online publication as a result of the immediacy it offers.

Gavin made some very interesting points about the formatting of releases destined for online publication:

Headlines – keep these to 65 characters or less to ensure search engine optimisation and make sure they include relevant keywords

Description – include a meta description of 160 characters or less which is keyword focused and can then be used by the online publication to describe your content.

Images – name your images with relevant keywords and include the caption to accompany the image as separate text within your release.

Links – if you would like your content to link to a specific landing page on your website rather than the home page then include the details within your release.

Social links – include details of the links to all your relevant social media channels so that if (and when) the publication decides to share your new content they are able to include you in the post.

the content in content marketing2 – Content

Now we’ve got the structure sorted it’s time to focus on the content itself.

Gavin observed that too much content is focused on what the MD wants to talk about rather than what our customers will actually find interesting.

With editorial departments being swamped by over sterilised corporate releases a little bit of extra thought and consideration for your copy can greatly improve not only the potential for it to be published but for it to have real impact.

This links nicely with the other contributor to today’s CIM
event, Chris Fielding-Martin, from UK hotel chain Malmaison.

Every piece of content Malmaison Belfast produce has an edge to it. From their new approach to ‘do not disturb’ signs to how they encourage breakfast room service orders to the signage they use to brand construction works at new or existing hotels.

They are able to do this successfully because they understand what their value proposition is, they understand their target audience and they understand the importance of consistency in all their communications.

As Chris pointed out during his presentation, as they’re in the hotel game what goes on behind the bedroom door is very much their business.

Of course we can’t all be as edgy as Malmaison but we can learn from their approach.

Understand what the objective of the content we’re publishing is. What are we trying to achieve? What do we want the customer to do once they have consumed our content?

Does the content we’re producing make it clear what our value proposition is in relation to the product or service that we’re promoting? Does it answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question.

Is the content we’re producing consistent? This is fairly easy to achieve if you have one person producing all of your content but if this is not the case you need to take steps to ensure this consistency.

This will require that you have clear brand guidelines which include a ‘tone of voice’ element.

What sort of language will you use – will it be formal or informal?

How do you describe what it is that your company offers?

What words or phrases do you use to describe the value that you are adding for your customers?

While it can all seem a little daunting it is essential that you take all of these steps to maximise the return from all the content development activity that you are involved with.

With the volume of content being produced across so many channels on a daily basis it’s essential that you take the time to carefully consider your content strategy as this will ensure you stand out from the crowd.

conversations in content marketing3 – Conversations

Maximising the success of your content marketing strategy is an ongoing process that continues well beyond the placement of your material in your target publications or on your own blog, website, social channels.

As a marketer I believe that the biggest potential benefit of the rise of social media is the ability for us to speak directly to our customers.

If our content marketing strategy is successful the result will be an increase in the volume of conversations about our product, service or company online. These conversations will happen whether we are involved or not so it is incumbent on all of us to make sure we are aware of all the conversations that are going on.

It’s important to stress here that this doesn’t necessarily mean we should get involved in every conversation – there are some conversations that we should take a step back from if they have the potential to damage our brand. There may also be cases, as highlighted by Chris from Malmaison today where getting involved may just be adding fuel to the fire.

While we should be a aware of these conversations sometimes it’s best to say nothing.

Negative feedback is probably impossible to eradicate so we need to know how to deal with it. This has to be considered on a case by case basis – some issues may be quickly sorted out in public on social media but in other instances it may be best to show an initial response in public but encourage the individual concerned to take the communication offline where it can be dealt with better.

Thanks to the CIM in Ireland for organising another great event today. I found it a very useful session and hope that this post gives those that didn’t attend an opportunity to be benefit from the presentations given by Chris Fielding-Martin of Malmaison and Gavin Walket of Business First.

I’ve included the Twitter handles for the relevant contributors to today’s event below:

Malmaison Hotels on Twitter

Business First Online

Chartered Institute of Marketing (Ireland)

Dealing with the Digital Skills Gap

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Digital Marketing Strategy Petrac Marketing

Digital marketing is an essential part of the modern marketing mix

With the amount of technology now available and the pace of change it’s never been as challenging for anyone working in marketing to understand all of the channels that are available when trying to get your product or service to market.

This has led to the creation of new Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing roles  – but I can’t help feeling that this is just an abdication of responsibility by those in charge.

Digital is simply a delivery mechanism for all your marketing efforts. There is no digital marketing – it’s just modern marketing.

In an increasing number of organisations there is a recognition that there is a skills gap in relation to digital marketing. However, it’s the response to this problem that I think is focused in the wrong place.

For too many companies and organisations this skills gap is addressed by the creation of a new role within the marketing team – Digital Marketing Executive, Social Media Marketing Executive being two such positions.

I don’t think anyone would argue that digital marketing represents a huge part of the modern marketing mix – so surely there is a requirement that every member of your marketing team is a digital marketer?

When creating the person specifications for all members of your marketing team surely some sort of digital capability must be included in the ‘essential skills’ box?

You wouldn’t employ a software engineer without the relevant qualifications. You wouldn’t employ a engineer without knowing that they had training in the relevant engineering discipline. You wouldn’t employ an accountant who hadn’t had the appropriate training.

The same should apply with your marketing team. Creating separate digital marketing roles is simply abdicating responsibility for digital to a single person in order to avoid having to learn about it yourself.

Digital marketing is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for anyone working in marketing. It’s essential that you have these skills or you will end up being surplus to requirements.

The other side of the same coin is that by skilling yourself up in all things digital you are giving yourself a serious competitive advantage over a lot of other people.

There’s simply no excuse any more – there are shed loads of formal digital qualifications out there and as much online content as you can cope with.

As with anything though the only way to really get it and understand how you can use it to improve your business results is to get involved.

So stop passing the responsibility on to others and embrace the challenge and the opportunity that digital marketing presents.

Get started now – Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute (Ireland and UK)

If you would like some help working out how you can take advantage of digital within your marketing strategy then get in touch.

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6 web development misconceptions of CEO’s

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website design pic

Your website project needs careful consideration

An recent article on the Entrepreneur website outlined 6 common misconceptions that CEO’s have about web development.

The article was written by Zach Ferres and while I agree with some of the points he makes there are some others that I think merit a little more discussion.

I think the article starts off on the right note:

Remember the last website project you were involved with – the one that went over budget and missed all the project deadlines that were agreed at the outset – was most likely your fault (by using the term ‘your’ I’m assuming that you were part of the marketing department that was in charge of leading the project within your organisation).

There is no doubt that most website projects are a lot more painful than they need to be. It really is very simple – and with some forward planning and a better understanding of what it is that you are trying to deliver you can avoid all of this pain.

One of the best lines I’ve ever read about web development projects came from a guy at a company called Fathom in Belfast – he said ‘It’s entirely possible for a website to be pretty and pretty awful at the same time.’

Why does this happen? Because too many web development projects are built around what we (the organisation) want to talk about rather than what our customers are actually looking for. I’ve written another post on this very subject called ‘Your website – for you or your customers?’

Anyway, back to the 6 misconceptions that CEO’s have about web development:

1 – Website development is easy

I agree with Zach Ferres here – those not directly involved in the project have very little appreciation for how long the ‘under the bonnet’ development work actually takes. Our role as project leaders for the web development project is to try and build this understanding – break down the project plan into the relevant phases that your development company has given you and highlight the time devoted to the development work.

This is difficult because most CEO’s, other board members and other people in your organisation are just dying to see the big reveal of your new home page design. They care very little about the journey planning element of the website architecture which is essential if the website is going to perform to maximum potential.

My advice – involve them in this stage. Get them involved in understanding who it is that is visiting the site and what they are trying to achieve when they get there. This will help to build an evidence based argument about what content should be on the site and where it should live.

2 – Everyone should be involved

In the original post Zach Ferres believes that the project should only be left to the people doing the work – I’m afraid I disagree. I’ve seen too many website projects fail because the project didn’t have the buy in of people across the organisation.

I believe it’s wrong to assume that only marketing will know what people are looking for when they visit your website – this is not a marketing project.

Your website is a project that should involve as broad a cross-section of people and opinions as you can muster. All of this work should be done at the outset and once all of the intelligence has been gathered then the build process will come together a lot more quickly than without these essential steps.

You will also find the because buy-in now exists across the organisation the final website will be much better received internally when your launch date arrives. This is because the decisions about how to categorise information, how to present information, what calls to action to include were all taken by your development group and were based on evidence.

This avoids subjective opinions on colours, button sizes and the location of information being used as the basis on which people judge your website. The only judging criteria worth considering is the user experience on your website and ultimately the results that it delivers for your business.

3 – Websites are a commodity

I am fully behind Zach on this one – if you want to use free website build templates for your website project you’ve got to accept their limitations. The more customisation you want to be able to introduce to your website, the more likely it is that a custom build is the route you are going to have to take.

4 – Once a site is built it’s done

Your website project doesn’t have a completion date – the end of the development project is marked by your ‘go live’ date. This is only the beginning of the journey to turn your website into a pipeline stuffing machine (or whatever your stated objective is from the website).

5 – Anyone can create a great user experience

While Zach Ferres disagrees with this statement in the original post I’m actually inclined to support the view that anyone can create a great user experience on their website.

The problem is that most people don’t.

But the reason why they don’t is (in my humble opinion) a result of the process that is followed during the web development project.

Too many projects jump straight into defining the various menu options and then deciding what information to house in these silos. Then the marketing department starts writing copy (largely with the aim of hitting all the required keywords).

And all of this is done with no consideration for who will be visiting the site.

Before a line of code is written, a menu option decided on or a word of copy written you need to go right back to the start.

  • Who is it that visits your website?
  • What are they looking for when they get there?
  • How did they get there in the first place?
  • What other sites have they been on before they got to yours?
  • Is this the first time they’ve been to your site or are they a repeat visitor?

Doing an internal workshop with the people in your organisation who interact with customers most regularly will give you some great insights into what content you actually need to look at for your new website.

You can then validate this information by asking some of your customers whether your assumptions are right. This is extremely powerful – it takes the guesswork out of the exercise and gives you confidence, even during the build process that you are building something that will deliver better results for your business.

This is a very simple process – anyone who knows about your business can contribute whether they’ve built a website before or not.

6 – It’s your website so you dictate the design

I’m back to agreeing with Zach again on this one – there are web designers with much better knowledge of what works in relation to web design than you. They will make sure your site follows best practice guidelines which will maximise the potential for your website to deliver for your business.

Once again, ask yourself the question – is your website for you or your customers?

No project should be signed off until it has been tested with real users and feedback taken and acted upon to improve the site experience.

Thanks to Zach Ferres for the original post. I hope you find these observations useful.

If you’re working on a website development project and you’d like some help then get in touch.

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Content Marketing – still to be convinced? Read this.

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content marketing as a magnet for new customers

Use content marketing as a magnet for new customers

There are some compelling stats out there supporting the rise of content marketing over the last few years – the number of web searches for ‘content marketing’ has increased by 400% since 2010 (stats from Google Trends) and there are now 27 million pieces of content shared online every day (according to AOL).

These 2 stats are taken from a great blog post by @captora last week called ‘20 tweetable content marketing stats that every marketer should know’.

I published a post last week in response to this attempting to delve a little deeper. While the figures are undoubtedly useful for reinforcing the importance of content marketing to any modern marketing strategy I feel that there is a need to look at what questions they provoke.

The 2 most important questions for me are:

  1. What does this mean for your company?
  2. What can you do about it?

My previous post dealt with the 2 stats mentioned earlier about the 400% increase in searches for ‘content marketing’ and the 27 million pieces of content shared online every day. You can read my thoughts on this by visiting the post – Need convinced about content marketing? Read this.

For today, I’d like to focus on another stat from the @captora post and answer the 2 questions posed above:

Stat #1
78% of consumers think organisations that create content are interested in building relationships.

What does this mean for your company?

This one stat alone sums up one of the major opportunities that exists with content marketing. For decades marketing departments were engaged in the game of producing content and hoping that the relationships you had developed with your target print publications would mean that your news release, project case study or company announcement would get featured.

In most cases the only way to really ensure this happened was to part with some of your hard earned budget and invest in advertising.

Of course the best print publications maintain a level of editorial integrity (and that is how they have survived) but content marketing represents a huge shift in the balance of power. We’re all publishers now and the technologies that facilitate the content marketing revolution have added a level of democracy to our communications that didn’t previously exist.

For the first time it’s genuinely not about how much advertising spend you want to commit to a specific publication in order to ensure the required level of editorial coverage.

You produce your own content and publish it. If it’s good enough it will gain traction online with your customers, increase your profile and ultimately help you achieve your goals whatever they may be.

Another benefit of this development is that your brand can have a voice and the opportunity to communicate directly with your target audience rather than being run through the editorial controls of your target print publications.

This helps to better portray the personality of your organisation which allows your potential customers to establish whether it is an organisation that they would like to do business with.

What can you do about it?

In order to maximise the chances of success from your content marketing strategy there is an old saying that was a particular favourite of the sales director of a company I used to work for:

“You have 2 ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Your first job in trying to take advantage of the content marketing opportunity involves listening and observing what is going on in the virtual world around us.

  1. What online channels are your customers currently using?
  2. What are the current issues within your industry that your products or services help to address?
  3. What have you got to say about these issues?
  4. What are your competitors currently saying about these issues and how can you differentiate your message?

Once you’ve got the answers to these questions you’ll be in a much better position to understand the kind of content you can produce in order to help you achieve your goals of more leads, more sales, more donations, more applications for the job you’re promoting (or whatever else is relevant for your business).

In summary, content marketing represents a huge opportunity for any business for whom their customer base is online. While the headline stats from the @captora post confirm this you need to understand what it means for your business and what you should be doing about it. Once you’ve nailed these two questions then the opportunity will begin to open up in front of you.

And you’ll enjoy the benefits offline as well – after all. you’re producing great content tackling the main issues facing your industry. What print publications aren’t going to be interested in that story?

If you’d like some help developing your content marketing strategy or producing the content you need to build your profile then get in touch.

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Need convinced about content marketing? Read this.

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I came across a great blog post today from @captora with some really powerful stats on the rise of content marketing in recent years.

There is no doubt that the stats are convincing – content marketing is here to stay and I don’t think you’ll get much of an argument from any modern marketers.

So here’s my problem – if my hypothesis is correct and there is an acceptance that content marketing needs to be central to any marketing strategy there must be something else that is stopping people from getting involved.

I think there is a general fear of content marketing – largely driven by the fact that it is often accompanied by the word ‘strategy’. This immediately conjures up visions of 100 page documents and puts people right off.

So, to try and dispel this fear I’ve taken two of the key stats from the @captora post and asked 2 important questions:

  1. What does this mean for your company?
  2. What can you do about it?

Here we go:

Stat #1:
There are 27 million pieces of content shared each day online

What does this mean for your company?

This is one hell of a big number – you need to understand how much of this content relates to your industry, to the products you are selling. This will vary hugely depending on whether you’re involved in a mass market consumer product or a niche engineering application for example.

What can you do about it?

  1. Understand what your goal is – what does success look like? Sales, website visitors, video views, increased followers, more enquiries?
  2. Two ears, one mouth – use them in that proportion.
  3. Search online for content relating to your industry (Google Alerts are a great way to do this).
  4. Search Twitter to see who in your industry is doing this stuff well – and understand why.
  5. Once you’ve done this initial research you will better understand what content you can produce that is suitable for sharing, likely to get a response and will ultimately lead to more sales leads (or whatever your overall goal is).
  6. Start recording these ideas in an editorial calendar and hey presto – your content marketing strategy is underway.

Stat #2:
The number of web searches for ‘content marketing’ is up 400% since January 2011

What does this mean for your company?

Take comfort in the fact that this suggests to me that there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand how to make the most of this opportunity.

The opening line of the @captora post says “Content marketing has become a buzzword in modern marketing”.

Content Marketing is simply the latest way to describe what marketers have always done – produce good content. It’s nothing particularly revolutionary. Your tone might have to change and adapt to the social media channels that you are using in order to get the best results but otherwise – keep on keeping on.

What can you do about it?

Once you’ve developed the first run at your editorial calendar then select the channels that are right for you and just get started.

I’m reminded of a quote from Thomas Edison that is relevant to this discussion:

“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

Hopefully you’ll get the hang of it well before the 10,000 mark – but the only way you’ll really find out what works and what doesn’t is to get started. Set yourself some small objectives at the start that you think will help you achieve your overall goal – increased sales, donations to your charitable cause, views of your Youtube videos.

There are a number of other interesting stats in the @captora post and I’ll return to these at a later date.

Hope you found this post useful – if you did please remember to share with your network.

You can follow me on twitter @petracmarketing

And if you want some help developing your content marketing strategy then get in touch.

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