Practical Content Strategy

Lots of people, including me, have written about Content Strategy and Marketing. Often we focus on describing the concept from a strategic point of view. Last week I had the opportuntiy to guide some students through a nuts & bolts exercice that focused on what to do to prepare a viable plan.

I asked them to examine their client project and answer these six questions each cascading from the previous:

1. define your online presence and channels
2. describe the objectives to be met via each channel
3. describe the content types required to meet those objectives
4. determine the source(s) of that content and plan for its sustained publication
5. define the website structure with a focus on its integration with all your online channels
6. define your SEO and include an Adwords campaign

1) Channels
Once upon a time the Internet channel was a website -- a one size fits all solution. No longer; now you can combine a variety of channels and you'll need to choose a combination right for your audience. Marketing a service to women 34-55? You'd better include Facebook.

Go to your audience don't wait for them to find you. Achieving this goal means finding out what Internet channels your audience uses and then combining them to achieve your goals. This can include websites, social media, mobile apps and so on.

2) Channel Objectives
Again, knowing your audience will help you make decisions here. If you're selling products you may decide to use Twitter to provide customer service, but your objective is that they'll click through to your site or mobile storefront app and make a purchase. Be clear why you're using a channel and what outcome you expect from it. That could easily mean a different call to action in each channel.

3) What Content is needed?
Now, you've determined the results you wish to achieve you can work out what you need to say and how you'll say it. Your Youtube channel might focus on product demos and information and feed people to your website to chat to a service rep. Different content and goals in your channels, but all leading to your ultimate call to action. Be clear what these will be and you'll save time and money and be more effective working with your clients.

4) Budget & planning content creation
What content have you decided you need to produce or acquire? Podcasts, whitepapers, articles, bloggng, news feeds, photography, charts? It won't fall from the sky. Aligning your content needs to your objectives will answer that question for you. Equally important, you need to budget for this work and see that it gets done in a timely fashion. Someone has to write that twice weekly blog: set aside the time, or assign someone as appropriate to your situation.

5) Your website is a hub of activity, not a static lump of pages
Your website is still a tremendous resource for static content and as a hub pulling together your other channels and pushing content back out to  them. Organize your site to support these goals. For many organizations this might mean abandoning the traditional "our site mirrors our organization chart" approach and replace it with a viewer-centric approach to presenting content.

6) Gain position on Google
Our goal here isn't only to attract people who already know your brand name, but especially those who do not. A big part of this objective is a recommendation to use AdWords as well as optimizing your site for search engines. SEO is important; adding Adwords to the mix will amplify its effect. Even with a Pagerank in flux you can still buy position in front of your audience. Paul Downs tells you why: My Grand Experiment: Turning Off AdWords and  Debating the Use of Google AdWords

Summing up: The process is a series of standard marketing 101 questions: who are my audience; what do I want to say to them; what action do I want them to take? Answer those questions first and the content you need and where you need to place it will shake out for you. All of this takes time and long-term effort -- yes, they were fibbing when you overheard people say, "Internet marketing is practically free."

Six Action Items To Build Online Referrals

Twice this week I've had a conversation with a small business owner about their Internet presence. Both were concerned with how to generate real world business from their digital efforts.

The first has a site where the content hasn't changed since its date of launch back in 2008, and the second has a newer, but static site. One is paying a hefty monthly fee for listing in a local business directory: with little discernable result. Both recognize that they need to take action to improve their  current results.

Growing your business with Internet Marketing is hard work. Being passive will not pay off. For the small business owner this means finding a budget to hire the expertise you need or learning how to do it yourself. More sweat equity, in other words, for many small business people.

I made six suggestions to both of them:

1. Blog regularly about your industry, the local community, and anything that relates them
2. Make sure your site's code is optimized for Google
3. Buy search position with Google AdWords
4. Make use of appropriate Social Media
5. Make sure there's an obvious call to action on your pages
6. Monitor and analyze your viewers' behaviour and tweak your site and messaging in response to it.

Each of those points deserve many more words than I can offer in the span of a short blog post, so forgive me for some broad strokes.

Your blogging voice

Corporate speak, marketing spin, awkwardly formal vocabulary ... those approaches seldom succeed in a blog. People read blogs because they're interesting and informative not because some one is overtly pounding the drum of a sales pitch. Be human; be yourself. Mitch Joel goes into this point in depth with this post at Six Pixels of Separation.

You  can't blog once or twice a year. Setting yourself a fixed day of the week to publish is probably the most effective way to guarantee that it gets done.  It is work and needs to be scheduled just like any other business task.

Good code helps Google

Here's where you do have to hire someone. Your teenage nephew is probably not the person to do this job. While it's not rocket science, it does take expertise and experience to properly code a web site. Ask your colleagues and competitors about their web developer. You don't want to make a mistake here as the wrong methods can mean a site that's invisible to seacrh engines -- I'm looking at you Flash.

SEO and SEM the plough horses of Internet Marketing

Paul Downs, in two posts in the New York Times last year, outlines his experience working Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing in tandem. He concludes convincingly to my ears that Google AdWords is essential to his online marketing efforts. I think they're well worth reading.
My Grand Experiment: Turning Off AdWords
Debating the Use of Google AdWords

Google Analytics is Free!

Make sure your web developer hooks your site into Google Analytics too. It's free and gives you the tools to monitor what people do when they do reach your site. Be prepared to make changes based on what you learn. It also hooks into your AdWords campaign so you can track its effectiveness. In Downs' first article linked above, he goes into some depth with how he uses Analytics to monitor his site and his marketing.

Build an online community

Social media is long term marketing. Finding and participating in your community of interest is the equivalent of joining the Rotary or Chamber of Commerce for my father's generation. Being a huckster in those places won't get you far; being a positive influence will.

It will take some research to find the platform that's right for you. Just like traditional marketing knowing your target market's demographic and where they can be found is the key. For example, women 35 to 54 represent one of the largest groups on Facebook. If that's your audience then you need to be there. The reverse is true as well. if your audience isn't on Facebook, then don't fritter away your resources there.

Learn More!

This Beginner's Guide may seem long, but if you're about to spend money and time it's worth it. Become an informed buyer.

Why Content Strategy

A well-thought Content Strategy powers so many, perhaps all, of the Internet's success stories. In this post I'll try to introduce some of the key concepts behind of coming up with a good strategy. I'm using Erin Kissane's gem of a book, The Elements of Content Strategy, as my guide here.

What is Content Strategy? In a few words, it's understanding the needs of your audience, preparing or sourcing material that meets those needs, and presenting it in ways that are useful. I find it helpful when working on content to stop thinking like a business marketer (or Mouseketeer) and, instead, think of myself as a publisher. I have readers not customers. Answer the question, "What does my audience need to hear from me?"

I believe there's an unwritten contract between a publisher and an audience. The publisher promises to provide content of value and the audience in return promises to return for more. Think back on Groundswell's objectives, that's where you'll find value.

Kissane describes seven basic principles of Good Content:

Good Content is appropriate

• Publish content that is right for the user and for the business

Good Content is useful

• Define a clear, speci!c purpose for each piece of content; evaluate content against this purpose

Good Content is user-centered

• Adopt the cognitive frameworks of your users

Good Content is clear

• Seek clarity in all things

Good Content is consistent

• Mandate consistency, within reason

Good Content is concise

• Omit needless content

Good Content is supported

• Publish no content without a support plan

I hope we'll be able to examine these ideas together — in class, during one of our Tuesday afternoon sessions, or any time you catch me sitting still. Heck, use that comment link below this post!

What does this mean to us as marketing and advertising people?

We've heard it in every one of our classes now: building a community, listening to it, empowering it and talking with it are the keys to Interactive Web Marketing. Content Strategy is what we come up with after we've been listening and empowering. At some point in time we do have to get our ideas across if we're to accomplish our business goals. The process of developing our content plan, for us as marketers, means being able to provide thoughtful participation in our audience's community. Here, again, we speak to the value we offer, and I don't mean value in terms of price: it's  meant in terms of the impact we can have on someone's life.

From the information architecture side of things, we ask why are people coming to us to learn, and how do I get them that information quickly and most effectively? In class today people were talking about how difficult some business sites make it to get to a phone number, let alone one leading to a human. That's old-fashioned brand management thinking at work. To my way of thinking what we should celebrate and enable is the ability for people to talk to us about our product: often that means making sure we put a human at the end of a phone line.

All of the above is by way of introduction to the topic: It sits at the heart of publishing an effective Internet presence. To help start you on the path to a better understanding I'm pointing  you to Simon Sinek on Start With Why. A good place to start all sorts of thinking, but especially Content Strategy.

Do you think Simon's ideas apply to what we're doing? How? Why? Always why.

This is a repost from an older site; I'm archiving it here ahead of that's site closure.

Five reasons I'm asking my students to blog

This term I've asked my students to publish their own blog and produce at least one article a week. I'm convinced that blogging has become another must-have skill for graduating Marketing students. Blogging well helps:

1. point to your ability for independent thought;
2. showcase creative responses to today's issues;
3. build a network of people interested in your ideas and concerns;
4. reveal your personality & humanity;
5. demonstrate your work ethic.

Why is it important?

These points combine to provide a solid demonstration of the writer's ability to be a thought leader. Inside any creative industry, people who are thoughtful have more to contribute to a team's success than not. For students about to graduate, showcasing this ability can be crucial to their success landing that first job. Heck, it'll probably help with every other job too.

A huge tip of the hat to my colleague, Frank Armstrong at St. Lawrence College, for blazing the blogging trail for faculty and students in the School of Business. His first-year students response to their Writing for Marketing blogging assignment has been inspiring and outstanding. This winter's third-year MCOM4 class is following in their footsteps.