Content is king, you’re right! But I think we all know how difficult it is to create content in a world where everyone, especially our competitors, is aware of that. It’s getting really hard to create “on-brand” content that stands out from the crowd (and the crap). Every day, a new blog post goes up about how to create viral, shareworthy, linkable content that drives traffic. But in my opinion, where content marketers tend to make the biggest mistake is on the promotion side of things. Either they’re not promoting it right, or they don’t know how to promote it at all.
Promotion is the king’s throne, and you can’t very well have a king without a throne now can you? Content is only king if you have a solid outreach plan behind every piece of content that requires any significant amount of time, money, or resources.
What I’ve learned from 5 years of designing and executing strategic content creation and digital outreach for various brands can’t be summed up in a blog post. However, one great thing about outreach is that some of the most difficult aspects of the job–from content conceptualization, to pitching influencers, to nurturing online relationships– are replicable.
Here are a few general qualities of a great outreach strategy. If you find yourself struggling to answer the following questions, come listen to me speak on this subject at the Integrated Marketing Summit in Minneapolis on September 2 at 2:30 pm, where I’ll be also be joined by Moria Fredrickson, who leads Dell’s content marketing services, as well as Higher Logic’s Hunter Montgomery, who will take a deep dive into how to use online communities to power your content marketing operations. Now, to the questions:
How do you leverage the right online communities?
This one is huge! It basically incorporates all of the below points. Building a community recognition platform was how I took one brand from launch to top rankings in a couple short years. Do you know what an engaged online community looks like? I’ve learned that if you can tap into that community’s natural tendency to share what makes them proud, you’ll have yourself a sustainable, offline, online, brand-building, community-empowering, media-magnet of an online marketing campaign that matters to people.
How do you weave PR and SEO fundamentals into your content development processes?
Do you want to get the topics your customers care about ranking for the things they’re searching for, and how they’re searching for them? It’s important to think outside of your on-site content strategy and place branded content on the sites that can help your content rank faster than it would on your own.
How do you best connect with media and journalists in the digital age?
What do media outlets and journalists care about? Which content gets written about? What metrics do they want to see? If you create the right news, promotion is easy. I have some helpful tips for ensuring that your news hits the papers (off and online), the nightly news, as well as the local blogs.
How do you gauge the success of your outreach efforts?
Do you want links? (The answer is yes.) Do you want shares? Do you want content placement across the web? Do you want your brand’s name where your potential customers are living and breathing? These are the metrics you’ll want to focus on. They affect rankings, they affect the state of your brand, and they increase traffic better than any offline PR campaign you’ve got going right now! But, where do you start and how can one piece of content achieve all of these things? This is one of my favorite parts of the conversation about content marketing, and I’m excited to discuss how we can make it successful for your brands too.
So, I hope I’ve enticed you to join me and a ton of other marketers focused on how to get the most out of your content marketing efforts in September at the IMS Event. I’ll use the story of one brand’s growth to expand on the ways you can maximize the impact of your branded content. I’ll get to as many of these questions as I can, and share my tested, proven, and actionable content creation and promotion tactics for you to take back and implement on your own websites, for your own brands. I’m pretty sure you’ll love the session, as well as the event in general, so we hope to see you there.
Here’s the registration link again: Integrated Marketing Summit, September 1-2, Minneapolis, MN. Oh, and if you want a super secret “friend of V3B 20% discount code,” use this one: IMSGS20
Photo Credit: BDavis12358 via Compfight cc
