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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'How to Build a Content Marketing
Strategy'


Posted by Stephanie Chang

Link building has fundamentally changed. Many types of link building activities
that have previously been effective are now either short-term strategies or no
longer considered best SEO practice. As a result, companies and clients alike
are seeking to understand how certain forms of link building can be translated
into longer-term content marketing campaigns. The purpose of this post is to
help you develop a framework on how to start building a content marketing
strategy for your or your client's site.

Why should you care about content marketing?

According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) 2013 Survey, 86% of B2C
(business to consumer) companies are planning to keep or increase their current
content marketing spending this year. 54% of B2B(business to business) companies
are planning to increase their content marketing spending in 2013. Knowing that
the demand for content marketing is increasing, it's worth investing resources
to start researching and learning more about the opportunities content marketing
can bring to a site.





The growth of content marketing is also a concept that Fred Wilson of Union
Square Ventures agrees with. Content marketing continues to see growth because
it is thefuture of online marketing. He likes to think of content marketing as
"moving the message from a banner to your brand and changing the engagement from
a view to a conversation."

Furthermore, Google's algorithm is continuously changing, meaning this pretty
much guarantees that the quick win strategies that may have worked in the past
will no longer work in the future. For instance, Google has announced that in
the future, they will no longer be announcing/confirming Panda updates because
it will be integrated into the search engine's existing algorithm (i.e. Panda is
here to stay indefinitely). We've also seen recently the dangers of garnering
links from paid advertorials (even on respected, high domain authority
websites), a tactic considered as "buying links" in Google's perspective.

Now is definitely the time to develop a new type of strategy to garner links
and traffic.

Inspirational examples of phenomenal content

Below are some examples of companies that have created phenomenal pieces of
content. Hopefully this provides ample motivation to take your site/client's
site to the level!

1.Kickstarter: Best of 2012: An inspirational take on 2012.



2.BuzzFeed lists:Heartwarming content that is easily shareable.



3.Indeed Job Trends: Data-driven content that is direct and to the point.



4.Shopify's Pinterest infographic and their new E-commerce University: Content
that is effectively targeted towards their demographic and developing their
brand as the E-commerce authority on the web.





5.Airbnb Neighborhood Guides: A visually stimulating take on neighborhood
guides, which differentiates them from other competitor's guides.



6. HBOWatch's April Fool's Day joke:Content with a clear understanding of
target audience as determined by the high engagement metrics. It gained 1129
comments!



7. Epic Meal Time:Videos targeted towards a male demographic. Topic examples
include fast food lasagna and whiskey syrup bacon pancakes.






The content marketing strategy framework

I've been fortunate enough to work closely with Distilled's Head of Outreach,
Adria Saracino, who's been absolutely instrumental indefining the below content
marketing strategy framework for a number of my clients (and has, subsequently,
inspired my passion for content marketing). Adria has also written a great piece
on how to get buy in from your company to invest in content marketing.



Below is the content strategy framework that Adria and I have implemented
together for our clients. We've learned that this process isn't a quick win and
that our most successful content marketing strategies have relied on dedicating
at least 3 months to just research - market research, site audits, content
audits, customer surveys, and customer interviews to name just a few. In
addition, I'll also showcase a few specific examples of how we've built out each
step of the content strategy process.

Step 1: Researching the company

The first step in developing a content strategy framework is understanding the
company. The type of questions we ask our clients before we even commence the
strategy is to identify the following:


The company's business model


How does the company bring in revenue?

What products bring in the most revenue? Why do these products bring in the
most revenue (high profit margin, high demand, branding considerations)?

How is the sales team structured? What metrics are they measured on?



The existing customer base


Who are the company's existing customers?

How does the company currently attract customers?

If the company's marketing team has already done a market research survey,
ask to see the results.



Marketing considerations


Understanding the existing content process


What are the editorial guidelines (if there are any)? What is the internal
process to get content approved?

Who decides what type of content to produce?

What types of content does the team currently produce?

What are the company's brand considerations?






Step 2: Data collection (and lots of it)

I believe in utilizing the data that we have available to make informed
decisions. This applies specifically to content; the more we understand about
the site and the customers, the more we are able to make informed and strategic
decisions to the type(s) of content we want to produce. In order to do this,
it's important to gather relevant data. This data can come from a variety of the
following sources:


Competitor analysis


What types of content are your competitors putting together?

How are users engaging with the content?

Comparing/contrasting SEO metrics (DA, PA, external links, etc.)



Keyword research


âWhat keywords bring traffic to the traffic (excluding not provided)?

What are the landing pages for those keywords?

What type of metrics does the keyword research and landing page combination
currently bring to the site?



Market research and customer surveys


The surveys may vary depending on whether the company is b2b or b2c.

Traditionally, some of the survey questions we've asked b2b clients include:


Demographic-related questions like occupation, industry, job title, age,
and gender.

How long have you been a customer?

How likely are you to recommend our services, products, etc.

Specific product/service-related questions



The survey questions we've asked b2c clients are very similar, but often
contain more demographic questions like: highest level of education obtained,
marital status, number of kids, household salary range, and occupation.


We also include specific product questions, like:


How often do you purchase our product?


Why do you purchase the product?








*Important Note* Be sure to test out your survey using other individuals
unrelated to the survey before releasing it. This ensures that there are no
ambiguous questions or that any questions have been framed in a way that would
lead to biased answers.

SurveyMonkey has also produced a variety of survey templates to at least help
you gain some understanding of the type of questions you might want to ask your
target audience depending on your goals for the survey.



Having these sample surveys is an excellent content strategy technique that
SurveyMonkey has employed.

Not only are the survey questions themselves important, but the email you send
out in conjunction with the survey is a big indicator of your survey's success.
Ideally, the more data you have accessible, the more likely the survey will
become statistically significant. As a result, you want to make sure that the
email template catches the audience's attention and also creates an incentive
for them to fill out your survey.

Below is an actual survey template that we've used for a client, which has
generated 917 responses or approximately 50% of the client's email list.




Phone Interviews with Existing Customers


As you can see from the survey template above, individuals voluntarily opt
for phone interviews because there is a guaranteed prize incentive.

Questions asked in the phone interview are much more detailed (allowing us
to eventually use this information for target audience persona development).
Fundamentally, the type of questions you ask in the interview must help you:


Identify the person's day-to-day responsibilities, likes/dislikes,
frustrations/pressures, needs, concerns, and function they play in the
purchasing process.


Function they play in the purchasing process is based on the following
roles:


Initiator:identifies the need to purchase the product

Influencer:evokes influence on the individuals who can make the
decision to purchase the product

Decision-maker:decides whether or not to purchase the product

Buyer:selects who to buy from and the agreements that come alongside
that

User:utilizes the product

Gatekeeper:has access or supplies information to both the decision
maker and/or the influencer












Step 3: Preparation and assessment

Now that new data has been collected from various channels, it's important to
assess/analyze the data that has just been collected and see how it correlates
with the data that you already have on-hand. During this stage, it's also
critical to take a step back and make sure that the goals for the content have
been clearly defined.


Create a benchmark audit using analytics


This provides an opportunity to compare/contrast results before and after
the creation of the content

Important analytics to include are:


Traffic

Pageviews

Pages per visit

Average time on site

Entrances/exits

Conversion rate

Bounce rate

Linking root domains

Page authority

Rankings





Putting together a content audit


âThe purpose of the content audit is evaluate how previous content on
the site has performed, as well as organize the existing content on the site to
determine additional opportunities.

For one of my clients, Adria and I analyzed the top 500 landing pages on the
client's site and took a look at the content from three distinct lenses:


Analytics metrics:engagement (bounce rate, time on site) and number of
visits (to identify potential keyword opportunities)

SEO metrics:linking root domains, page authority, etc.

Content perspective:is this useful for a user? What type of user would it
attract?


We individually analyze each content page and determine where it sits on
the content funnel.


Awareness:Content created for this part of the funnel is designed to
target an audience that hasn't even begun to consider the company's
product/services.

Trigger: Content created for this part of the funnel is when a user
has become aware of the product/service and has started thinking about the
possibility of needing it.

Search:User has decided to research the product/service in-more depth.

Consideration:User has decided to convert, but hasn't decided which
brand to choose.

Buy:User decides to convert to the company's product/service.

Stay:Content targeted towards retaining clients, ensuring they remain
a loyal customer/brand advocate.












The purpose of labeling what stage of the funnel each piece of content is
associated with is to ultimately assess the distribution of content on a site
and determine if there are any gaps. For instance, this particular site had 180
unique content pages and the distribution of the site's content looked like
this:



In this specific case, it is apparent that a majority of the site's content
sits at the bottom of the funnel. As a result, we recommended to the client that
they create more content that targets higher up the funnel. However, it is also
important to bear in mind that a site is not necessarily looking for an even
distribution of content at each stage of the funnel. The amount needed is
determined by various factors, like keyword research and an iterative approach
in which content is built that targets a specific stage of the funnel.
Afterwards, these pieces of content are analyzed to determine if they proved
value based on the site's pre-determined content goals and KPIs. This closely
ties into our next point, which is:


Clarify the goals for this content strategy. Goals should be general like:


Increase in conversions

Increase in organic traffic to the site

Increase in audience engagement

increase in brand awareness



However, goals/metrics should also be specifically correlated to where that
content sits in the content funnel:


âThis great article by Jay Baer explains it in more depth:


Consumption metrics:How many views/downloads did your content receive?

Sharing metrics:How often does your content get shared? (Tweets,
Likes...etc)

Lead generation metrics:How often do the consumers turn into leads?

Sales metrics:How often do the consumers turn into sales?



Ideally, the consumption metrics would be correlated to content higher up in
the funnel and the sales metrics correlated to content located further down the
funnel. See diagram below:







Develop persona buckets


In order to achieve this, combine all the data that was derived from the
content audit, customer surveys, and customer interviews. Once you've done so,
segment individuals into different categories, like this:






Image Courtesy of Kissmetrics


Solidify the editorial process for the company


Who needs to be included in the content development and implementation
phase? When do they need to be included?

Have a clear understanding of the dependencies (i.e. how long does it
typically take to get sign off from relevant departments?)

Determine the site's style guide/tone of voice/engagement standards



Define the content strategy


What types of content will be produced on the site?

Where does this content sit in the funnel?

Where would they sit on the site? In a separate category on an existing
category?

What keywords would the content target?




Going through this detailed, research-intensive process allows a company to
clearly see the opportunities at hand from a high-level perspective. When we go
through this process, we identify ways to improve not only the company's
organizational structure and create standardizations on how content and pages
are released onto the site (static URLs, keyword targeting, content tone of
voice/length). It's also through this process that we've been able to
engage/integrate multiple departments and define ways to work together
seamlessly.

Furthermore, we also gain a concrete understanding of the big opportunities for
the site. It's impossible to go through this much research and not be able to
discern multiple opportunities related to CRO, information architecture, keyword
targeting, and analytics, to name a few.

Step 4: Prospecting

This phase of the process is identifying individuals/sites who would be
interested in the type of content the company will produce and engaging them at
multiple points with the goal to develop relationships with key influencers.


Identify and reach out to influencers


Identify influencers through tools likeFollowerwonkand Topsy




Keep on top of industry news


Keep on top of the content that competitors are creating



Step 5: Create and promote the content

In this step, the "go" is to now create the pieces of content and follow both
the internal protocols and sign off processes that were established in step
three of the process. Ensure that editorial standards are being followed and
assess that the content being created is actually phenomenal.


Create the content and consistently reassess to make sure it is meeting the
following checklist:


Is the content credible?

Is the content informative?

Is the content easy to understand?

Is the content useful?

Is the content exceptional?



Promote and outreach the content to key influencers



Step 6: Assess content performance

After the content has been released and promoted, it's time to assess how the
content has performed and any other learnings that can be taken away from the
process, including:


How has the piece performed?

What learnings were taken away from it? Any changes that need to be made to
the process?

What data have we received from the piece of content?


The long-term vision is that the content is able to fulfill the original goals
of the content marketing strategy. Overtime, each piece of content produced
should systematically become easier and easier, as learnings are developed and
iterated each time. Although, the process appears very resource-intensive in the
beginning, overtime, the goal is that producing effective and meaningful content
becomes a crucial entity for the company.


In conclusion, the most valuable benefits of having a content strategy for your
site is that, from a business standpoint, your site is no longer creating
content for "content's sake" or to build "link bait." Moving forward, the site
now has a framework of creating content that serves multiple purposes:to engage
with current and future customers; to establish brand awareness and authority
within the industry; and to consequently garner more traffic, conversions, and
links to your site.

Furthermore, by integrating multiple individuals into the development of a
site's content strategy, it automatically provides the groundwork of integrating
SEO seamlessly into the other online marketing activities of the site, such as
CRO, social media, and PR.
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