Download - 7 Steps to Creating Engaging Content
7 Steps to Creating Engaging Content
New Tools and Tactics to Create Content That Drives Business
The Presenters
Pelin Thorogood is a new media marketer and entrepreneur, and was recently named one of the “20 Women to Watch” in sales lead management. Pelin also serves as a Executive-in-Residence at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management.www.schulmanthorogood.com
Andraž Tori is Co-Founder and CTO at Zemanta. Zemanta, a blogger's assistant that helps over 80,000 bloggers was responsible for enhancing over 1.3 million blog posts in 2011. Andraž is active in the semantic web technology community and has recently spoken at SemTech 2011 and Web Fest .ME 2011 conferences and is slated to speak at BlogWorld 2012 in New York. www.zemanta.com
@PelinT
@andraz
Relevance!
Relevance is KeyRelevant content is key to findability
SEO: Relevant content / structure & links to relevant external articles, blog posts photos and other images
Relevant content is key to customer engagement, stickiness and community building
Relevance Engagement Conversion
Creativity without Conversion = ZERO
#contentmarketing
7 Steps to Creating Engaging Content
1. Understand Business Goals
2. Create a Content Strategy
3. Unleash Your Inner Data Analyst
4. Know the Right Tools
5. Create Relevant Content
6. Get it Read
7. Measure & Optimize
#contentmarketing
1. Understand GoalsWhat is your company trying to accomplish?
Who is your target audience?
Are you in alignment with marketing?
#contentmarketing
2. Content Strategy
What is your content strategy based on your objectives?
What types of content do you need to support each objective?
How will you measure success?
Relevant
#contentmarketing
‘Lifecycle’ ContentReach/Acquisition Conversion Retention
Blogging White papers Email newsletters
Online press releases Explanatory videos Social media content
Infographics Customer video testimonials
Customer support content
Surveys and trend data Case studies Product tours
Viral video Data sheets Webinars
Social media content Product reviews Blog
Podcasts Webinars Contests
Blog and forum comments Advertising and search copy
Contests
#contentmarketing
3. Inner Data Analyst
Familiarize yourself with web and social measurement
Understand how content drives results based on your objectives
Know how to establish benchmarks
Use data to optimize and create better content
#contentmarketing
4. Know The RightTools
measurement distribution production
#contentmarketing
Adding links to external content provides context for your readers
Linking to own content (within reason) helps with SEO performance
Linking to previous posts builds a larger story
#contentmarketing
Content Creation Best Practices
Content Creation Best Practices
SEO best practices define “keyword focus” as one of the most important things in online writing. The “right” keywords are very much dependent on your content strategyEngaging content not only requires the use of the right words but also the right structure.
#contentmarketing
Visual Appeal
Images draw attention to the post
Images help demonstrate your points
Respect copyright laws
Take advantage of image recommendation tools that provide license information
#contentmarketing
Content Creation Best Practices
• Skyword study found an average increase of 94% for articles that included an image or infographic.
http://skyword.com/blog/96-skyword-study-add-images-to-improve-content-performance.html
#contentmarketing
Content Creation Best Practices
5. Create Relevant Content
Use data to understand what your audience is interested in and what types of content work best
Marcus Sheriden: “Your customers’ first 50 questions should be your first 50 blog posts.”
Be creative
Link to relevant external sources, including articles, blogs photos
Tell a story
Call to action
#contentmarketing
6. Get it Read Leverage your Community: Social channels, customer advocates, influencers, paid advertising, etc.
Work w/marketing and public relations
Leverage employees
Measure!
CommunityFind other writers or bloggers in your niche
Engage them on their content
Encourage them to respond to your posts
Ask for guest blog posts and reciprocate
7. Measure & Adjust Measure impact of content based on objective – leads, sales, etc.
Measure most effective type of content
Use measurement to drive content decisions
Remember: creativity w/out conversions = zero
Don’t Forget The Basics!
Segment your audience
By role, by age, by gender, by education, by intent, by behavior…
Test! Test! Test!
Across mediums, properties, audience segments…
Think Life Time Value (LTV)#contentmarketing
Results: eBeanstalk.com
Seven-week results, averaged across the four optimized pages:
Reach: Increase in search engine traffic (29%)
Reach: Increase in paid search impressions (45%)
Engagement: Increase in time on page (153%)
Conversion: Increase in conversion to sale (17%) #contentmarketing
Results:Convice & Convert
Four weeks of results for the 12 pages (5 rewritten, 7 new) on Convince & Convert:
Reach: Traffic from search engines increased an average of 33% across the five posts that were rewritten (optimized)
Reach: Four of the five rewritten posts achieved top 10 Google rankings for target keywords
Reach: Six of the seven newly written (optimized) posts achieved top 10 Google rankings for target keywords within 48 hours of publication
Results:
• Used Zemanta WordPress Plugin for image recommendations, Amazon Associate affiliate linking and connecting to other blogs in their niche.
• Would periodically link to LifeHacker articles.
http://bloggingyourpassion.com/how-using-the-zemanta-wordpress-plugin-can-increase-your-blog-traffic/
#contentmarketing
Results:
• Strategy paid off as one of the Lifehacker bloggers took notice and linked back to one of Blogging Your Passion posts
• Link resulted in nearly 5,000 visits.
• 6 other bloggers wrote about the same topic and linked back to the original post.
#contentmarketing
Thank You!Pelin Thorogood, Schulman+Thorogood Group
@PelinT
www.schulmanthorogood.com
Andraz Tori, Zemanta@andraz | @zemanta
zemanta.com
#contentmarketing