Content Marketing is without doubt the most popular member of buzzword bingo at the moment. With updates like Panda and Penguin (easily track all this with SEOMoz's Algorithm Tracker) and the devaluation of low quality links, the role of content in SEO has never been greater. Many of the large SEO agencies are doubling down on their efforts to sell themselves as content strategists, not just SEO consultants, and where the big agencies go, usually everyone else follows. With the next Google Penguin update (dependent on when this post is published, it may have already been released) touted to be "jarring and jolting" for a lot of webmasters, we can expect content marketing's shine to get even greater.
Changing from "build" to "attract"
From an SEO viewpoint, the interest in great content is to attract links, where as a lot of what Google is looking to eliminate are examples of where content is used to build links: articles, spun articles spammed across thousands of directories, blog posts spun across networks, networks that dragged in content form places like Youtube, Yahoo Answers and article directories to create mashup posts, blog comments, spun blog comments using scrapebox so you can hit thousands of sites at a time, web2.0 link wheels made from spun content, reclaiming tumblr blogs with PR and adding posts with links to your site, buying up dropped domains and using archive.org to re-add the previous content so you can link to your site, finding squidoo len's to comment on, the list could go on and on and on. It's a lot easier to build links with subpar content, as you don't expect anyone to read it.
What's being sold as "Content Marketing" - is truly great content that people want to share and link to = hey presto ... you're #Number1inGoogleB*tches.
The problem with a lot of SEO's evolution into "Content Marketing" is they are really just thinking about links/shares - it's a blackbox approach, with content going in and links and social shares coming out:
There is more to Content than Links
The reality is true content marketing isn't just about links and shares. In the words of copyblogger:
"Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.” CopyBlogger
Content Marketing is so much more than getting links. It's the glue that holds your funnel together. It's the reason a prospect visits your site, it's the reason they choose to move further down the purchase path, buy a product and return to your site time and again. Real content marketing is complex; it's not just building a great infographic and notifying some bloggers about it. If you are purchasing a "Content Marketing" strategy from an SEO agency where the sole objective is to acquire links - you are going to waste money in the long run. Sure links can be a metric, but real content marketing is expensive, as a link building strategy - it's very difficult to make a decent return on.
If you are investing in content marketing, why not put together campaigns that drive goals across your funnel and have links and shares as a metric, but not the sole objective. Let's start with TOFU (Top of Funnel) content marketing campaigns ....
Top of Funnel - Joining the Dots
Your approach to content marketing will differ slightly dependent on where the campaign resides within the funnel. For example, the following is a snapshot of what may be involved in a TOFU (Top of Funnel) campaign.
# Objective
Anything successful in life starts with a clear and concise objective/goal. For example, a goal could be structured as:
Core Objective: Our content campaign is aimed at people who love to camp and are looking for the latest pair of hiking boots from brand X. We want to attract X amount of new visits, rank for keyword “X” on first page of Google, attract 15 links from PR2+ sites and drive X% of these new visits into our product page (which converts at X%) - of course that X% can be improved upon by MOFU (Mid of Funnel Campaigns) via A/B Testing etc
Secondary Goal: We want X amount of these new visits to turn into Facebook Fans and X to turn into new Twitter Followers
The more specific you can be about the goal of your content campaign the better. When asked to explain what you are doing to a VP of marketing, having a well-structured campaign mapped against core business goals will get you a far bigger budget than "I'm trying to get links".
Your Twitter Highlight: Your Content Marketing Strategy Should be aligned to Business Goals
I have purposely left out revenue in the above goal as I am splitting campaigns into Top of Funnel and Mid of Funnel to show the importance of content throughout the purchase path. If you're running a content campaign across the funnel - you should have revenue as a metric. You will need to quantify your own metrics to establish the ROI on your campaign e.g. how do you value Cost Per Link.
1. Persona Development
Persona development is a crucial part of any successful content marketing strategy. There are a number of ways to develop personas:
- Using your Analytics
- Social listening (this is hard, I’ve done it)
- Interviews with prospects
- Interviews with customers
- Interviews with people you want to become customers
- Customer surveys (if you have a big enough Email DB)
- Google consumer surveys (https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home)
- Even running an internal workshop with different teams provides great insights. You would be amazed how much valuable information is stored within the customer support team, example of a previous one I ran with the help of iqcontent.com
Something that’s really important to keep in mind is your content campaign may touch multiple personas. For example, in the objectives mapped out above, the persona we are targeting for new visits isn’t necessary the same persona who is going to link to you. Unlike online marketing, where most people have blogs, it’s highly likely in other industries the people who you can get links from and potential customers are not the same person.
Your Twitter Highlight: If Links are your core goal; you need to target the personas who actually have the power to link to you.
2. Strategy
Once you have personas in place, you can build out your content campaign framework. This should be broken into what I call The VP Strategy and The Actual Strategy.
But What's my VP Strategy?
This is for that moment in a meeting when you are asked, "Hey what are you spending my 100k on?" They don’t need your life story, just an overview that makes sense.
We are building an interactive map of the globe where users can click around and learn about the best camping destinations in the world + what camp gear they should bring for each hike.
We are doing 10 posts on our own blog to promote it. We are doing an outreach program with 20 experts on outdoor pursuits; these experts helped us develop the content for the map.
We are doing PR with 10 online camping magazines about our Facebook competition where you can win a holiday to one of the destinations on the map. The clues to this are being given away on our Twitter feed; you have to follow to get them, as they are time sensitive
We are also running paid campaign via remarketing, content network and third-party placements to support our initial launch
The above may not be great, but you get the point :)
The Actual Strategy is your project plan. I usually start everything with a flow diagram (creately is awesome for this) – I am a visual thinker so this helps a lot - how you plan content could be totally different. But you need to plan .... :
Your Twitter Highlight: Divide your content campaign into a VP Strategy and Actual Strategy
3. Resources
Most content campaigns will fail because they have no clear objective and they haven’t considered what resources they require (often not having the correct resources to implement the campaign). You need to define:
-
How much will this cost in total? This includes any piece of activity related to the campaign, regardless if its coming from your budget or some other department’s e.g. if you are feeding Facebook/Twitter with great content – maybe you have a social media budget that you can
stealtake from :) - What internal resources do you have?
- What external resources will you be using?
For our campaign we probably need:
- Project coordinator
- Content strategist
- Outreach consultant (to get bloggers onboard)
- Developer (for interactive map)
- External agency for design
- PR manager (for pitching of the competition)
Resources should be part of your project plan doc.
Your Twitter Highlight: Your Content Marketing will #fail if you don't have the right resources
4. Content Types
What content types will you be using in your campaign:
- Blog posts
- Guest posts
- PR pitches
- Video
- etc
Your Twitter Highlight: Map out every asset your content campaign will include over the whole lifecycle of the project
5. Mediums
What mediums are going to be used to promote your content? For our example we are going to use:
- Google (organic): Once our piece lifts off, we expect to acquire traffic for informational key phrases around “camping destinations”. Yes, not all these are going to purchase our product. But some may share it, like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, join our email list or help us amplify the content. Think both macro and micro conversions.
- Facebook: Let’s assume we already have an audience on Facebook we can promote it to. We can also use this as a way to acquire new fans via paid ads – but how effective it is to pay for fans is open for debate.
- Twitter to promote time sensitive clues for our competition
- Email Marketing: Yes, building an email database should still be part of your marketing strategy. Guess what Email Marketing is NOT DEAD. Leveraging it for content campaigns is a great reason why. Just make sure you are doing it right.
- Remarketing: We are going to build a list of anyone who has visited our product pages on camping gear. Instead of advertising another product to them – we are going to take them back up the funnel a little and show them this great interactive map. Maybe they won't buy, but the might help amplify our message.
- Display: We are going to run a small display campaign across a select number of outdoors activity sites advertising the interactive map. Google content network campaigns advertising free content tend to perform quite well.
- Guest posts: Once live we are going to ping the experts who helped us put the map together. There is no requirement for them to post, but we hope they will :). Dependent on your brand, this step is really easy or really hard. The great thing about content marketing is, the better you get, the easier this step becomes.
Your Twitter Highlight: Even the most remarkable Content will #fail without a solid promotion plan
6. Metrics
Doing content for "Brand Awareness" or "Thought Leadership" is easy, as most companies do not put anything measurable against these goals. Putting metrics against what you are doing and reporting to senior execs is a lot more difficult. You will get asked what did I get in return for my spend? Having an answer to this will put on you a par with every other exec (mostly in Sales), who can easily answer that question.
a. Goals
Defining goals for content marketing campaigns is not easy, just as defining goals for whitehat link building campaigns is near impossible (unless you are just doing guest posting). How do you put a number against how many links a piece of content will deliver naturally? But it's critical you have specific goals for any campaign you put live. These will be defined in your objectives:
- X Number of Visits
- Improved Keyword Rank (To First Page)
- Attracted X Number of Links
- X Number of Visits into Product Page
- Increase X Number of Facebook Fans
- Increase X Number of Twitter Followers
Most TOFU (Top of Funnel) campaigns core goal is not Sales(B2C)/Qualified Leads(B2B), but thinking in terms of Macro and Micro conversions will help put dollar/euro values against each goal. For example, you can get the number of sales generated by your product page (either when it's the landing page or when it's some part of the journey), using this you can put a dollar/euro metric against each visit generated to that product page as part of this campaign. It's then up to your MOFU campaign to split test the hell out of the page and turn these into sales.
b. ROI
ROI isn't going to be a straightforward calculation. How valuable is each new visit? (Google Analytics Mutli Funnels help a lot). How valuable is your improved visibility on Google? How valuable are visits to your product page? How valuable are your Facebook Fans/Twitter followers? In most cases, it might not be possible to answer all these questions, but if you want executive buy in for large content campaigns - have some type of ROI forecast you can give them.
c. Links/Shares
Yes, links and shares are good metrics to have. Trying to put a monetary value against these are a lot more difficult. You are better of measuring what links and shares should bring e.g. new visits from both google and social media.
Your Twitter Highlight: Content Marketing Campaign without metrics is like p*ssing in the dark. Spraying everywhere and just maybe hitting the target
So you are now thinking Top of Funnel Content Marketing Campaigns !! and well on the way to being a ......
#TOFUContentMarketingNinja
But what about the Mid of Funnel (MOFU) Campaigns ... that's going to need a whole other post !! Hope you can hold on for part two !!
Very cool post and actually very useful... I'll wait for the MOFU post, as I was going to ask you about how to complement it with TOFU (EOFU > End of Funnel... if it exists as definition).
Ah... good idea the Twitter highlights. Jen, may we find a way to make them real tweetable text directly from the post?
I thought the twitter highlights were cool, too.
But I got this feel at the end with the hashtag-ed phrase, that we are being marketing to, just like this post is detailing. I just find it ironic.
Thanks for reading. The hashtag was really just me trying to sum up the post. Probably not the best phrase I have come up with, but it was just meant to be a bit of fun. Nothing more. I didn't really put much thought into it.
Amazing Post Kieran,
One of the most important reminder for all SEOs that includes me is that content is not just a piece that can help you grab links but it is a complete campaign that if used correctly can help you expose your presence in the REAL world and offer your more return on your investment.
Love this line: Even the most remarkable Content will #fail without a solid promotion plan
It is highly important to have a solid marketing plan or you will face the obvious fail.
Overall a great read!
Clearly all content does need a promotional plan, but isn't there a point where your site can carry itself without additional promotion, purely due to people linking to you?
Agreed and that is only possible when a piece of content really contain that worth that people (i mean REAL people) continuously link to it and share it with their networks...
But to be honest reaching to that point you need a solid road that allow visitors to find the content easily... imagine the most beautiful house that you built 100 feet down the ground and reaching to that place is almost impossible... obviously if you want people to see it, talk about it and passes their comments about it then you have to build a road that allow people to reach to the point easily...
Hi Kieran, great post.
Every few posts on the SEO and YOUmoz blogs become bookmark material and this is one of them.
I first started reading your post and got as far as the Copyblogger quote when I realized I had read something similar yesterday. @jasonacidre posted on Twitter about a post from 2006 that he considers to be EVERGREEN (and it is). Anyways, here's the post: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-web-site-or-blog/. I think it reflects many of the points you are making.
I'll be coming back to this post over and over I'm sure. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing George. I'll take a read of that article.
"the interest in great content is to attract links, where as a lot of what Google is looking to eliminate are examples of where content is used to build links"
I think that's one of the best ways I've heard it explained! Links are a by-product of great content, but the real goal should be to help your audience and build authority. That's the kind of content that is going to get shared, promoted, and linked to.
Yeah, agreed 100%. Also content works across the whole funnel, not just top of funnel.
You have serve needful concept to SEO marketers. Content marketing is necessary for the building brand of our campaign. Every one looking for the fresh content and new topics, if we followed your content marketing strategy then content marketing becomes affordable for us. Content has power to link customer, in this post you have brilliantly written about the how to make readable content and develop our content marketing strategy. I think today every one need these tips for growing their business. By sharing good content we an also grow our social network and I think social network is best medium for the content marketing. I am also doing content marketing for engaging more visitors. You content sharing matrix will really helpful for me to create more attractive content.
Hi Sanket
Glad you enjoyed it. thanks for the comment
Would love to see an example of a PR2 site. Since I cannot find an example (and in fact quite a bit of spam) a little skeptical. Seems like a pretty low standard or entry point for anchoring a content marketing campaign.
Thank you for a very insightful post. This has really helped me grasp the full process of content marketing. I love the way you have also also done such a clear breakdown of how to demonstrate the value of your proposition.
This is surely one of the best post I've ever read on Seomoz blog. Thinking in terms of campaigns opened my eyes, helped me outstandingly to clarify and connect lot of issues about content marketing!
Thanks a lot! :)
Amazing post searchbrat, I do agree with that content marketing is useless until it attracts visitors to your post or your website. Just content marketing is not enough, we need to make our content attractive and informative so that people love to read our content.
Excellent article. Thank you! This comes at a perfect time when the value of a well-planned strategy which focuses on high-quality content is often overshadowed by a focus on a high volume of low-quality links. You had me at " Your Content Marketing Strategy Should be aligned to Business Goals".
Somewhere I've read, "Never before in history has so much been written by so many, read by so few - blogging."
If the content marketing strategy is aligned with business goals, i.e. lead-generation, branding, etc., measuring performance is simplified. Many companies create content that succeeds in driving a high volume of shares and links but fails to achieve top level goals.
Looking forward to part #2.
Thomas Harpointner
CEO, AIS Media, Inc. | www.aismedia.com
Director, Direct Marketing Association of Atlanta | www.DMAAtlanta.com
amazing post, thank you!
We are in the process of mapping a content marketing strategy and this post will help us plan it and monitor it. Thanks.
Content is determine all successful activities through the off page activities :)
https://www.easycommerce.in
Printed, read again, highlighted, underlined, and used! Thanks for your insight, Kieran.
There is not much relevant information on this topic on the internet, thanks for sharing some knowledge and very well explained.
Kieran, great post, and thanks for the shout out on the cost per link article.
Great article. I appreciate that it's a very detailed and systematic approach with actual strategies rather than a typical gloss-over, like "just make engaging content." Cheers.
I had to reread this twice just to take in all the information here. I've always believed that there was more to SEO than just linking and getting links. There's something that's incredibly difficult to recreate when you can generate content that just draws customers in and converts them into repeat clients.
I love how you covered the extent of planning for a proper content campaign. It takes a lot more than most people realize, but in my opinion, is one of the most outstanding and long lasting strategies in approaching SEO.
Thank you for the great blog post!
Thanks for the comment, yes, content marketing is a lot more complex than people give credit to :)
A few days late to the party because of the way I read blogs - but great post, Kieran! Really loved the "build vs attract" concept.
I've been mulling over setting objectives for some time, and the bit about objective setting triggered a question. How to you set an optimal objective ie. how do you know whether getting 100, 1000 or 10000 visitors is a good target? This might go into competitive research territory, but if you have any pointers on how to set an objective to a campaign or even a quarterly objective, that would be much apppreciated.
Keep up the good work!
So, I just wrote a long answer to this and the accidentally hit "Add Comment" so it was wiped. The short answer (I gave a really long one), is, I would try measure against business goals. You could increase visits, links, shares, but not make a single extra sale, dependent on the personas you target. If you can put a monetary value against both micro / macro conversions, it will make it a lot easier to figure out your ROI.
That being said, I know measuring extra visits may be the only option in some cases and can be a good measure of your brand gaining more traction in the market, so I am def not dismissing it as a metric. I would look at quarterly increases as a % of what you already have, rather than putting an exact number against it. It's very much dependent on a host of things like market you are in, personas you are targeting, resources you have etc etc. Also, are you trying to rank for any organic keyphrases as part of this, will that drive additional sales.
Measuring content is pretty complex. I am currently working on a post for this, so will hopefully be back with it soon.
Let me know if the above answered it, I kind of rushed the response because I lost the 500 or so words I wrote for the original reply :)
Shame the original answer was lost - but it was helpful anyway. Thank you!
I am optimizing for conversions, but sometimes it'd be good to get more context. Getting 20 signups per month from a landing page is great, but perhaps competitors score 100+ conversions from similar things. Or maybe they can do the same with half the resources. I guess this is nearly impossible to know based on just Alexa traffic info and SEOMOZ ranking changes and it's more of a gut feel thing.
Looking forward to your post about measuring content!
Thanks for the blog, I enjoyed reading it. What makes me laugh so hard about the SEO scene in general is how much emphasis people put into BUYING or BUILDING links - it's absolutely ridiculous. I've barely ever done any link building in all my time in SEO, I'm a firm believer in "give the readers what they want, they'll give you what you want" (which is obviously back links). If you give your users high quality web content that offers rich information they will go away and link to it. If you fill pages full of dour, useless content, they won't link to it. It's pretty simple logic.
To that end, my advice to all webmasters out there would be to forget about spending lots of money on link building, and invest that money in the highest possible quality content instead (assuming you outsource it, and don't write it yourself). Sometimes you may need to do a little link building yourself to get some traction in the SERPS, but as soon as your site starts getting traffic, if the content is up to standard, you should start seeing links roll in on auto-pilot thanks to your visitors.
Just my 2 cents!
[link removed by editor]
Thanks for the great post. Definitely will have to read later at the office so I can make some serious notes. We are currently adjusting our strategy and this content marketing is going to a part of it!
Great article Kieran, thanks for sharing this with us. Really like your comment about what some SEO-angencies sell as content-strategy. Unfortunately this is still reality on the German market, but posts like yours hopefully will help to change people's minds.
Keep up the good work and cheers from Germany Sven
Thanks for comment. Glad the article may help change people's minds on the differences between content marketing and link building :)
I realize that in a way, "link building" does not mean anything. Perhaps, "Engagement Building" would be better... as a result of content marketing done the proper way
Really good article. It's a really nice way of looking at linkbuilding and very true - you post good quality, engaging content through Social and rss/atom feeds there is a better chance of getting that content shared and linked to.
Glad you enjoyed the article James, thanks for the feedback
Awesome post ! I never thought of the "build vs attract " idea, and I think it pretty much sums it all.
I'd love to translate it into French and post it on my blog (with all credits and links etc) would that be ok ?
Makes me think of one question a client recently asked (he is a plumber, small 3-page site, local customers only) ; "Does it mean that in order to be ranked well in Google I will need to have you write lots of content about plumbing ?"
That's why I think content marketing as a link building tactic isn't the right way to think of it. Content marketing means people are naturally sharing your content. Link building implies you are building links to your own content. The "build vs attract" is the way I think of it.
Happy for you to translate in French if you include credits & links.
Thanks for the comment
Hi!
iung what is your french blog? I'm french too and I would love to read it and maybe even contribute sometimes if you need people>?
Thanks
Hi
I will post the link today, the translation is 80% done
thx
Gil
You gotta love this post if you want to know more about content marketing. Surely helpful for those whom are new to CM.
I think that content marketing is a necessarity to do but to measure the ROI of it is cumbersome and that's a shame. I've to agree that the seo's evolution into "Content Marketing" have been mostly about links and shares. But all that matters in the end is to convert the visitors and that's what those who do "traditional" seo's have to focus more about - to generate commitment. To generate commitment, content marketing is really valuable to do.
Totally agree Carl, measuring the ROI on content marketing is not easy. I think it helps if you split it into Top of Funnel and Mid of Funnel. You can then build out macro and micro conversions. Thanks for the comment
Thanks for the post Gianlucca. I haven't really given much thought to End of Funnel campaigns. I really count Mid of Funnel down to point of sale/opportunity being created. I'll have a think about that when putting the next post together.
Yeah, it would of been good if I could have made the Twitter highlights tweetable. I thought they were a good way to sum up each section.
Making twitter highlights real tweet-able is a great idea... i guess a lil alteration with the twitter button can make it possible!
Thanks Moosa, that's one of the most important lines in there, even great content needs some type of solid promotion plan around it.
Thanks for the comment
Really really very good post.There are lot's of hints to perform a good SEO campaign.I understood the value of content marketing and links explained.keep it up.Thanks
Glad you enjoyed it Reba, thanks for the comment
Great post Kieran! I recently wrote on a similar topic -- in addition to content types it can be helpful to think about keyword types. In other words, ask yourself: What are my goals? Who would I be targeting? What kinds of keywords would they use to find this information? What kinds of content best fit those keyword types? You can find some examples here.
Thanks!
Thanks Elisa, I think segmenting by keywords, content type and persona is a great way to go beyond the traditional keyword map. I'll take a look at your examples now.
Awesome post! Looking forward to MOFU ;-)
Really good article on the growing importance of effective content marketing.
Well written and very educational! Well done :)
I will have to scour this when I get home, but it looks awesome :)
Great post! I think people are finally starting to come around as far as "it's the content, stupid" thinking. This is a great overview and hopefully as helpful to everyone as it was to me. Tweeted, bookmarked and Evernoted.
Really very great article written with deeply research. This Article help to make new SEO strategy, This is my personal opinion. I strongly appreciate you for outstanding research work.
Love it! Lots of useful information. I'm tracking what people write about content, and this is really good article.
Wow, great post, i'll need a few hours to take this all in, a must read twice article. thanks searchbrat