As you’ll probably know by now, here at The Content Marketing Academy we have taken on the job of curating the best content on the web and showcasing it to you, our audience. There are lots of great resources out there to help business owners with content marketing and we are here to fast-track you to the best content.
It’s our mission to help you to improve and develop your content strategy for your business, in turn helping you to grow your business and deliver a better service for your customers & audience.
In this article I’d like to share my personal notes on what I took away from reading ‘How to build your business with Content Marketing: a BS-free guide to Content Marketing Strategy‘, which was published July 2014 by WP Curve. All the quotes that you will find in this article are directly from the WP Curve article.
Click here to read the original article.
Getting started with content marketing strategy – solid advice from WP Curve
A company that is now well known in the industry for their content efforts and successful business model is WP Curve, headed up by Dan Norris in Australia. If you’ve not heard of WP Curve before now, you should definitely check them out, visit their blog WP Curve.
What WP Curve do really well
- Create consistently great (useful and helpful) content and business insights
- Produce transparent monthly income reports – I personally love this approach (similar approach to a lot of other successful internet businesses)
- Provide a much needed service – at hand 24/7 WordPress support for people who are managing their own WP websites
WP Curve has created a buzz around the business community and encouraged and assisted many business owners (including myself) to think differently about how we do what we do – and they have done this all by sharing their experiences and lessons learned through their blog content.
Six reasons you should read this article
- It is written by an experienced content marketer – Ross Beard
- It is backed by Dan Norris, who has developed his business through content marketing (to a tune of $20,000+ monthly recurring revenue and 500+ blog articles).
- It is easy to read, extremely helpful, useful and transparent
- It is inline with what many other content marketing leaders are reporting
- It is packed full with great resources and links to other useful and informative articles
- It is an awesome example of longer form compelling content
In short, it is a credible article; the article has been published by a company that has used content marketing to successfully develop their business, as opposed to a content marketing agency attempting to sell content marketing services to businesses and organisations, which I feel is a very important distinction to make.
Prefer to listen?
Click the play button below to listen to Chris chat about content strategy on episode 9 of the Marketing Academy Podcast.
4 steps to content marketing success
The WP Curve article is structured around these 4 main steps to developing a successful content marketing strategy:
Step 1: Understanding your audience
Step 2: Developing a content strategy
Step 3: Creating compelling content
Step 4: Promoting content and increasing reach
A very logical approach to developing your content marketing strategy. In my experience most don’t do the hard work in steps 1 & 2 in order to follow through and be successful in steps 3 & 4.
Content marketing strategy lessons from WP Curve
Introduction
Content marketing is “one of the easiest and most effective ways to attract new visitors, build trust with leads and convert existing customers into long-term, repeat customers”
For us as business owners this should give us the direction we are looking for, but we should also be asking ourselves why we haven’t fully embraced the philosophies underpinning content marketing. It’s worth noting at this point that it’s likely to be bad advice to stop everything you are doing to focus on your content marketing strategy.
“Advertising is a cost, content marketing is an investment”
Joe Piluzzi from CMI also discusses the distinction between a marketing ‘campaign’ and a content marketing ‘programme’; a campaign has a deadline, a programme does not; a campaign is viewed as an expense, a content marketing programme is viewed as an investment; your content can create more value over time.
In short, what this means for us as business owners is that we can invest our resources – time, money, effort – into developing content that continues to add value to our business and our audience over time. Which is the opposite of spending your resources on adverting, that only yields value for a short period of time.
“You won’t get it right from the start. It’s not possible, no matter how many guides you follow”
I think this is a valid point, which reminds me how your content marketing will mature over time. You have to start with a plan and strategy and be flexible enough to adapt it as your content matures. The only way to get better is to start and develop your skills through application.
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great” – Zig Ziglar
Step 1 – Understanding your audience
“There’s not one best way to do content marketing strategy. However, there is one commonality…a good understanding of what content gets good results in the community, what content appeals to the audience and a structured effort to create more of what works”
I still find it strange how more people don’t spend time on their buyer personas. Recently I was in a room with about 400 of the top marketers in the UK and only a small percentage admitted to having buyer personas for their audience.
What’s even more strange is that ALL of the top marketers across the globe feature this as one of the first steps in marketing strategy.
“The number one way to learn more about your customers is to ask them by using short surveys”
This is a great tip from WP Curve and in my own experience works very well. I have developed my own approach by sending out an email to a specific group of people with just one specific question that is concerned with a frustration or challenge. It has worked very well in providing me information about what my audience need help with. (In all honesty I was initially very pleasantly surprised by the response I received from my short form surveys, and it’s good to know that it works for other businesses).
This is also a good strategy for generating ideas on what kind of content to create – you can use short surveys to find out what your customers would like to learn or know more about.
Step 2 – Developing a content strategy
“The real question you need to ask yourself before starting with content marketing is this: where do you see your business in 12-18 months”
“You must approach content marketing with a long term perspective…it’s a long-term play”
I’ve personally had this conversation with many business owners, and far too many of us are playing the short game for the quick wins (note: I’m not saying that you should stop this approach, but there has to be a long term strategy too).
Is now the time to build in a content marketing strategy for your business? Do you already feel as if you are successful? Is you current more traditional marketing efforts working? In that case, now is the perfect time to start developing your content strategy. Start working hard and putting in the effort today, and build a solid foundation for the future.
One of the main reasons content marketing doesn’t work for small businesses is because of the lack of a content strategy and plan. It is therefore vital to understand why you are using content as a marketing strategy and to ensure that it will help you achieve your goals. Remember, it is entirely possible that content marketing is not the appropriate method for you at this time.
Content marketing “is about earning familiarity, trust and relationship”
If you think carefully and deeply about this quote from Rand Fishkin…how long does it take to build a relationship? It doesn’t matter if it’s through content or face-to-face, it takes time and patience. Content marketing will not return immediate results and therefore you need to put your strategy in place and follow it through. However, if you need quick results and sales, there may be a better strategy for you at this particular time.
Step 3 – Creating compelling content
“The best advice I could give for creating compelling content would be to create a lot of content and start paying attention to what is having an impact, Look at comments and what people are saying. Are people saying ‘I can relate to what you are talking about’ or ‘this is awesome I’m going to use this in my own business’.” – Dan Norris, WP Curve.
“After a few blog posts and a couple of successful webinars, you will be able to determine what works in terms of results and what needs to be reevaluated”
With reference to an earlier point about just getting started; the only way to really get to grips with the performance and effectiveness of your content is to start getting your content out there and see what works and what doesn’t.
Here are seven content types that Ross Beard has found to be effective in his own successful experience:
- Blog posts
- Webinars
- eBooks and guide
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Templates and checklists
“It is important to note that your audience may prefer to consume a certain type of content”…”you may also prefer certain types of content”
It’s great to get Ross’ insight into the most effective types of content, and I’m sure you are already consuming content through these mediums, but how much content are you creating through these mediums?
What content do you prefer creating? What content do your customers prefer consuming? These two simple questions are worth strong consideration.
Creating Blog Posts
“Aim to write one blog post per week and target the 1,200 word mark”
Key tactics:
- Choose a topic
- Keep it organised
- Target one keyword per blog posts
One blog article per week should be achievable for most businesses – especially if you prioritise it as something that must be done for the future success of your business.
One of the questions I get asked all the time is “how do you find the time to write blog articles” well…you just do it because you know you have to. You make it a priority, you make it part of your plan, and you make it happen. No one else is going to make it happen for you. Click here for more on finding the time.
Blogging is a really great way to get started with your content strategy – its affordable (free is most cases) and easy to do, plus there’s a lot of information online to help you get started with blogging. Click here to read more about the benefits of blogging.
Creating Webinars
Webinars are not something I have been involved in personally, and I’m looking at them with the intent to implement webinars shortly. This article has been useful in signposting me to some of the best applications and resources for hosting a successful webinar, including John Lee Dumas’ Webinar On Fire.
“I have found webinars to be the best type of content for moving leads through the buyers journey. No other type of content gives you a way to speak one-to-one with a potential customer and provide personalised help, instantly.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve read about the success of webinars and they are definitely worthy of attention, study and consideration as part of your lead generation and content strategy.
Content creation tools to investigate and utilise as suggested by Ross Beard
- Mailchimp
- Leadpages
- GoToWebinar
- WordPress
- Grammarly
- Canva
- Google Keyword Planner
- BuzzSumo
- Wistia
- YouTube
- MajesticSEO
Is your content valuable?
Here is a very useful checklist from WP Curve to help make sure your content is useful:
- Useful: Does it have utility?
- New idea: Is it a new spin on an old idea or a brand new idea altogether?
- Valuable: Will a reader get value from it?
- Actionable: Are there action steps a reader can take?
- Entertaining: Does it read well… maybe even a few chuckles?
- Evergreen: Will it be relevant in a few years from now?
- Shareable: Is there an incentive for readers to share it?
- Slideshareable: Could you make a short deck out of it?
- Eye catching: Does the headline make you want to read it?
- Flow: Does the content flow and read well?
Step 4 – Promoting content and increasing reach
“every content plan needs a complimentary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media” – Matthew Gratt, BuzzFeed.
In this section Ross shares some tried and tested ways to promote your content to your existing audience and new audiences. I can relate to what Ross is saying here, in that most of us don’t really put as much effort in as we should to the marketing of our content. As mentioned earlier in the WP Curve article by Rand Fishkin “if you create content, they will come” – a sure fire way to failure.
A summary of promotional techniques
This is a great summary of techniques or tactics that you can use to get your content out to your audience.
- Email marketing – weekly digests
- Social media – engaging with your audience
- Offline – hard copies of eBooks and guides
- Search engines – Targeted keywords, useful
- Partner with associations and industry news sites – Pick out sites that your audience already visit
- Co-create content with other businesses – Find other businesses working to attract the same audience as you
- Paid advertising – Pay per click on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to promote your content
Conclusion
“Content marketing needs to be integrated into your bigger picture marketing strategy and be an extension of what you are doing with your other marketing communications”
This is a fantastic point, which has come up very recently in other discussions online, and I also mentioned it earlier on in this article. Focus on the word ‘integrated’ here. Think about how you can build upon what you are doing alreay and take what you are learning about content marketing to improve your strategy as a whole.
Just like everything with regards to success in marketing and business, there’s no silver bullet and what will lead to success is a combination of different activities.
Actions
Here’s what I’ll be focussing on after reading and studying the article:
- Webinar-on-Fire by John Lee Dumas – look at this as potential assistance and guidance for creating great webinars
- Develop your content strategy and schedule
- Read The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide by Lewis Howes
- Find the best and most effective method for creating audience and buyer personas
- Increase and develop knowledge and skills of Leadpages and test with webinars
- Use BuzzSumo to find trending topics
- Check out all the related articles in the WP Curve articles
Final note from Chris
With reflection upon an earlier point, I think it’s worth mentioning that you should try not to get intimidated by what seems like a lot of work, time and effort to produce a full strategy. The best thing you can do day-to-day is get a little better and improve over time.
If you are just starting with your content strategy, or if there is room for significant improvement, the best advice I can give you is to click here and read the WP Curve article in full, study it, take your own notes and PLAN TIME IN YOUR SCHEDULE to work on and develop your content strategy.
You turn
- Now that you have read through my notes, what actions are you going to take?
- Where do you feel your weak areas are with regards to your content strategy?
- What challenges do you have and what do you need help with?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below