The Tip Jar is a weekly inbound marketing tip that is only available to subscribers. This week’s tip jar is the third in a four-part discussion of how to put together a complete Internet marketing strategy; developing a content strategy.
Tip Jar: Content Strategy
[nonmember]The Inbound Marketing Inquirer is free to view for members. Create a free account:
[register_inquirers (free)][/nonmember]
[ismember]
Building a successful Internet marketing strategy actually requires a combination of four other foundation strategies; website, keyword, content and promotion. Let’s take a look at creating a content strategy.
After establishing a keyword strategy, the next step is to determine how to create content based on those keywords. These strategies will include static website pages, blog posts, videos, graphics, ebooks, etc… The goals of a content strategy are to generate:
- Familiarity
- Likeability
- Trust
- Conversions
According to Hubspot’s Marketing Data Box, blogs had the highest instance of being reported as a below average cost, with 55% of companies reporting this. The average budget spent on company blogs and social media increased from 9% in 2009 to 17% in 2011. Marketers, the survey found, are decreasing the portion spent on PPC, direct mail and telemarketing. The top three inbound tactics are based primarily on content marketing tactics.
Our content marketing strategy will include the following:
- Competitive analysis: Using the results from your keyword research, perform a competitive analysis for your foundation keywords by plugging them into a SEO tool like the Keyword Difficulty Tool from SEOMoz. Which websites are already ranking for our targeted keywords? Why are they ranking? What can we learn from them and how can we beat them?
- Influence prospecting: Next, find out where the influencers in your industry are. Are there influential bloggers or social media users who are dominating our space? If so, can they be engaged? This can be done simply be performing site searches with your foundation keywords on Twitter and LinkedIn (for example). Alternately, you could use more powerful tools like Followerwonk.
- Content research: Using the completed keyword research, determine a list of topics and formats (i.e. copy, video, graphics, ebooks) and then establish an editorial calendar that matches them against a specific marketing goal.
- Authoring: Establish team responsibilities, resources and expectations. Provide training as required.
- Channels: Figure out how the following channels can be used for content promotion:
- Blog
- Social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest) [/ismember]
Reading List
Search Engine Optimization in Real Life
Google’s marketing team has tried (and succeeded pretty well in my opinion) to translate its Analytics product into terms we can all understand. They released a series of humerous videos that illustrate some of the outrageous hoops website owners expect their customers to jump through.
Fewer Than One Quarter of Small Businesses Have Social Media Strategies
Small businesses are getting better at using social media to meet marketing and customer goals. However, they struggle with figuring out a strategy and deploying social media in that strategy.
21st-Century Automation Marketing
Each year, control magazine publishes its list of top 50 automation companies. This year, I was invited to write an accompanying cover story article on 21st-Century Automation Marketing. It examines the state of inbound marketing within the industry.
