Content Marketing 101Building an audience & growing your business

About meJon Norris (not Robin or Ashley)

@Jn_Norris

http://jonnorris.work

What is content marketing?

• It’s a way of building traffic to your website

• It’s building engagement with your users

• It’s the creation and sharing of media

• It’s the centre of your social media, SEO and paid

advertising strategies

Old media

With content marketing...You own the magazine AND the advertising

To build an audience...

Channel your inner BBC

• Inform

• Educate

• Entertain

Inform

GE Reports

• Stories from

around GE

• Highly visual

• 300k visitors

Educate

Simply Business

• Educational

microsites

• Step-by-step

• Videos

Entertain

Red Bull

• Colossal budgets

• Amazing content

• Logos

everywhere!

Different purpose / different traffic

Entertaining (viral)

Informative

Educational (evergreen)

It’s not about you...It’s about your audience

But where to get ideas?

What will bring prospective customers to your site?

• Frequently asked questions

• Free resources & tools

• Engaging content

• Something that addresses a specific need

But how to publish them?

Think multi-format. Just text is boring (but is important for

search).

• Images / video

• Social hooks / interviews

• Topical content

But how to plan it?

• Get an editorial calendar

• Stick to it

• Post regularly (not necessarily often)

But how to promote it?

• Engage relevant audiences

• Social channels

• Internal linking

• Search optimisation (more on that later)

• Publishing is the halfway point!

But how to win business?

• Include brand messages

• Include calls to action (“Sign up now” etc.)

• Encourage readers to share / comment

• Collect personal details in a clever way

Example: Copyblogger

How do you know it’s working?

• Google Analytics

• Set up goals and track conversion rates by post

• Use successful posts as inspiration for more content

• Track lead quality by source (to determine where the

right audience is)

An example

Invoice templates• Great “gateway

drug”

• High search traffic

• Useful!

• Dedicated ongoing

promotion

An example

It works!

Search optimisation

• Important keywords in title, URL and body

• Internal links with exact-match anchor text (e.g.

invoice templates)

• External links (either earned or owned)

• Rule of thumb: Great content promotes itself

Useful tools - research

• Keyword Planner - search volumes

• Internal site search - what are people looking for?

• Forums - what do people struggle with?

• Social media - ask people!

Useful tools - production

• Wordpress - other CMS are available

• GIMP (free) / Photoshop (£9pm) - image editing

• YouTube / Instagram - social network of choice for your

content

• Twitter - @AP_Planner for topical content, Buzzsumo to

find influencers

Useful tools - promotion

• Yoast - search optimisation (Wordpress plugin)

• Hootsuite - social promotion

• Reddit / Quora

• Paid options - Outbrain / Taboola

Useful tools - lead gen

• Marketo / Pardot - lead nurturing

• MailChimp - email signup

• SumoMe - conversion optimisation

Content Strategy is these things working together

• Ideation• Creation• Publication• Promotion• Audience attraction• Conversion

At scale...• Planning is key• Get processes in place• Involve everyone• Every month:

• Measure• Report• Optimise

Never ever

• Try to mislead your audience

• Try to cheat Google

• Make your content “me, me, me!”

• Announce blog posts with a press release

(apparently people still do this)

Thank you!Hire me - http://jonnorris.work