What in the world could a band known for its live shows, drug culture and merchandise have to do with successful content marketing today? Surprisingly, a lot, says Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com, as he shows how the Grateful Dead successfully mastered the use of content marketing to create their army of intensely loyal “Deadheads” in only four steps.
Even if you’re not a member of a psychedelic jam band, you too can use these steps to think about your business’ content marketing approach and how to best “give away something valuable in order to sell something related.” According to Clark and “the Dead,” there are four key steps to truly successful content marketing:
Although every business or brand can benefit from productive content marketing, there are some times when you shouldn’t even bother, explains Joe Pulizzi over on the Junta42 blog. He shares seven problems for brands that often result in ineffective or even useless content marketing.
Instead of producing custom content just for the sake of having it, knowing these common pitfalls could be key in refining your content marketing strategy. He shares seven, but here are the three we found most useful:
It’s news to no one—who doesn’t know that Google is the No. 1 search engine? But a new report from Experian Hitwise gives content marketers an important reminder about keywords and search engine optimization.
Sure, there are other search engines out there, namely Yahoo and Bing, but those stand in the shadows of Google, which accounted for 72 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in May, according to the report. Yahoo’s share was 14 percent, while Bing had 9 percent of all U.S. searches in May. Ask.com accounted for 2 percent of all U.S. searches.
If your content marketing strategy includes keywords for search engine optimization, give preference to content that will influence where you want your business to land for that keyword in Google. In most cases, the content marketing strategy for getting Google hits will be the same for the other search engines, but don’t get too excited if your business pops up on page 1 in Bing but buried in Google. That keyword should still be marked “needs improvement.” Or rather, “needs content.”
Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to step back and take a thorough look at how effective your blogging efforts are. Sociatic calls this auditing your blog, and breaks down the 20-question process into six areas to look at: Design, subscriptions, content, monetization, marketing and measurement. Some of the questions they suggest you ask yourself include:
As a nod to all of the professional journalists who are turning to content marketing for job security, Clare McDermott of Junta42’s Content Marketing Institute gives us six things we can learn from these former newsroom junkies about content marketing. They all are great and make perfect sense, but here are my favorites:
“My name is Lucille Meachum, but I’m Lucy to everyone, only Lucille on my business cards. I’m 41, and happily married now for seventeen years — wow. I have two great kids that can really get my blood pressure going one minute, but can be sweet and caring the next, even to each other.”
No, that’s not an exercise in creative writing you’re reading, it’s an example of a persona you should be creating for your content marketing strategy, according to Keith Weigold, a contributor to Junta42’s new Content Marketing Institute blog.
To know who you’re targeting with your content, Weigold says, you have to understand more than just their demographics. “A key to engaging content is put the customer first, to solve her problems and answer his questions. This requires understanding their beliefs, feelings, wants and needs,” he says.
Weigold walks us through the process of creating a persona–starting with the information we’re most likely to have about our customers (demographics) and filling in the blanks until you can write your target customer’s narrative.
“This ultimate step truly places you within her shoes and provides the customer-centric viewpoint so crucial to effective content marketing,” Weigold concludes.
In most cases, a client’s website plays a big role in their overall content strategy. But how many companies take the time to think about the goals of their website and how they fit within their overall content marketing strategy? Not many, based on our experience. The good news is that it’s never too late to stop and rethink the purpose of your website.
Patsi Krakoff, content marketing specialist and co-founder of The Blog Squad, shares recommendations for five content marketing goals for websites:
Writers and editors frequently need to find experts who can speak authoritatively on the subject of an article. Journalists who specialize in a given field soon accumulate a list of go-to gurus, but generalists don’t have that advantage.
Probably the first thing you try will be a direct online search. You may strike gold—especially in the sources cited by sites such as Wikipedia—or you may be overwhelmed with irrelevant sites. And even after refining your search, the results may still be ambiguous or less than solid.
Here are some suggestions for narrowing your search:
• Ask your editor for suggestions about experts.
• Run a search for other articles on the topic to see who’s been consulted previously, or, even better, experts who write on the topic.
• Blogs can be a good source of leads to experts. Similarly, Twitter may help you find people who post regularly on a given topic.
• Contact relevant professional or trade associations. The organization itself may include highly knowledgeable individuals, or they can direct you to members who are versed in the subject. Suite 101 also recommends consulting universities, whose faculty may be knowledgeable or can direct you to colleagues who can help.
• Websites such as Help A Reporter Out and Media Bistro serve as a crossroads for writers seeking information and public relations professionals and businesses eager to supply it. The Adventurous Writer recommends Prof.net as a source of professional experts.
• JournalismNet describes itself as “a free web site with over 600 pages … designed to bring you an investigative guide to the Internet – the best tools, tricks and websites from around the world.”
• Friends and colleagues may be able to help—writers and editors minds are attics where all sorts of odd facts lie waiting to be discovered.
Once you have a list of experts, take time to check them out online to see what others have said about them, such as possible biases. You may still use an expert with a known slant, but you will be able to include that as a caveat to your readers.
How-to articles for using Twitter abound, but we liked the way this article from Connected Marketer zeroed in on helpful tips for tweeting responsibly and building a B2B community on Twitter. Blogger Jeremy Victor outlines the how Twitter can help “start conversations and build real life relationships” that will ultimately benefit your business.
Our favorite tips:
Don’t: Flood your audience with self- or company-promotional tweets. A balance is critical.
Don’t: Post negatively about a competitor. Don’t post negatively about anything for that matter.
Do: Provide value and be selective in your tweeting. Only tweet about things that the community of people whom you are working to attract will find interesting or valuable. A great place to start is to share links to industry news or new product announcements.
It’s been a little over a month since Apple’s iPad was released, and while the full effect of the device will not emerge for quite some time, a few content marketers have shared their first impressions of the device.
Rex recently outlined his thoughts about the iPad, touching on the debate among early adopters regarding whether or not the iPad is “good for creating content.” Google Docs are read-only on the device, but the Keynote app allows you to create an entire presentation.
And while he doesn’t view magazines as a medium that needs saving, he does believe that the iPad “provides lots of opportunities for magazine companies who do something other than replicate magazines on an app.”
Over at PM Digital, they asked their digital bloggers for first impressions of the iPad: