blogging as part of your content marketing strategy

Copyright © 2010 All Rights Reserved ShipServ Ltd – www.shipserv.com

Blogging as part of your content marketing strategy.

John Watton, CMO, ShipServ28 April, 2010


I will cover…

• A bit about ShipServ• What we did• Why we did it• How we did it• 5 Lessons Learned


A bit about ShipServ

• E-marketplace. $1.5bn in GMV per annum• Connect buyers & sellers of commercial ship

supplies• Flexible monetisation model

– Some Freemium elements– Buyer Subscriptions– Seller listings and advertisements

• Go-to-market approach– Regional direct sales (10+)– Philippines-based telesales team (50+)


The challenge

• Micro-multinational (160 employees in 6 locations)

• Serve a global, fragmented business community.

• Risk averse, conservative audience• No competition = have to educate the

industry = nurture• Need to move from broadcast to

conversation• Shift of features from software to users


What's your view of Social Media and its role in the shipping business?

29%

65%

6%

Valuable new tool Distracting waste of time What’s social media?

Source: ShipServ e-commerce survey, April 2010


Content marketing defined

Content marketing is turning your insight and advice into campaigns that change people’s minds and incite action


My goal

FROM• Impersonal• Shout• Sell• Persuade• Instruct• Product Vendor• Promote

TO• Personality• Listen• Nurture• Participate• Inspire• Trusted service• Entertain

From “We USE ShipServ” to “We’re MEMBERS OF ShipServ”


Creating the right content

• Has to pass a higher bar than ever before

• What passes that test? – Information that a buyer believes will

• Save a fortune• Make a fortune• Keep him in his job• Keep him out of jail


Our content marketing plan v1.0

• Content and micro-content around calendared themes• Promote and distribute the content through low cost online

media – especially social media like LinkedIn and feeding the Twitter account with blog posts, social releases, etc.

• SEO keyword planning and site and landing page optimization

• Creating a LinkedIn Group as a community hub and encouraging membership

• Exploitation of five other maritime groups on LinkedIn (who together have over 11,000 members)

• Viral videos to lighten the conversation• Marketo lead nurturing and lead scoring to track visitor

behaviour and create sales-ready leads


Our content marketing plan v2.0

• Started with big themes & campaigns• PLUS quickly incorporated

– Short company news & updates– Pimping our own content– “Bigging up” customers, partners, etc – “Come and meet us”– “Hey we’re people just like you”

Before


Publish once & keep our own “dial tone”

web

RSS

Linkedin

twitter

facebook


Take the pain out of newsletters


“Splash and drip” – using blogs in lead nurturing

March 09 May 09

Tip #1 ……Tip #2………#3……...#4…...…#5…...…#6…..…#7….…#8..…..Tip #9

April 09

12 month campaign

Promotion & download

Blog

Newsletter

eBook

Lead nurturingLead scoringSales intelligence


Guidelines?

socialmediagovernance.com/MSFT_Social_Media_Policy.pdf


Getting help

• A good agency can help keep a blog on track -- but expect the core stuff to be from your core team (we do)

• Journalist freelancer can be good. After all it's a journalistic medium...


The benefits

• Thought leadership – the core of our TL program• Speed – to respond to timely stuff• Informality – lets us relax our voice• Engagement – elicits comment & feedback• Distance – ability to get a bit of separation from

the corporate storyline• Connectedness – ease of linking to (and co-

opting) anything on the web• Social Media fodder – something to tweet or link

to from LinkedIn, etc• SEO mojo


3,321 people have read our blog in the 12 months up to April 2010

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 530

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

RE

AD

ER

S

Weeks


5 Lessons Learned


1. People are people


2. Go micro


3. Get into a routine


4. Re-pimp your content


5. Be authentic


Thank You

[email protected] / @jwatton

mailto:[email protected]

blogging as part of your content marketing strategy

Business

risk averse

fragmented business

john watton

conservative audience

content marketing strategy

shift of features

it5 lessons