Most of the ideas and graphics in this post were taken from a KISSmetrics webinar. The webinar’s focus was to highlight strategies for disseminating content beyond your company website and positioning team members as experts in the field, to create inbound business. In this team blog, I’m going to quickly summarize what was covered in the webinar and highlight tools or ideas that could be useful at Intrigue.
Table of Contents
Section 1: How to build influence with content
Summary: 80% of decision-makers are looking for information in article form, rather than in an advertisement. We are switching towards a culture of “informed consumers”. The key is to build trust with audiences by publishing content that is valuable to them. Content marketing is about establishing a rapport with people and using that connection as the foundation for growing your brand.
Takeaway: Create a knowledge bank within the organization, where team members can store information about Intrigue, our clients, and marketing strategies. With this team blog, we’ve already got a great starting point. The goal would be to continue to build it over time.
Tips for creating a knowledge bank:
- Update it regularly, like a journal
- Keep your audience in mind
- Crowdsource the knowledge
- Organize it by category and keyword
- Make it accessible
KISSmetrics also offers a knowledge management template.
Section 2: The Thought Leadership Approach
Summary: Thought leadership content can be understood as gas for your car (where Intrigue is the car). Although good content can take many forms, it should possess three broad characteristics:
- Internal knowledge
- Industry knowledge
- Factual data
The idea behind the Thought Leadership Approach is to build credibility and drive inbound business by situating yourself as a “thought leader”. The Marketing Funnel diagram illustrates how guest-contributed content is the first step in this approach.
Takeaway: Take steps to build this funnel. With Intrigue’s blog, Learn&Do seminars and eBooks, we already have the bottom and middle sections in place. The key would be to find ways to build the top part—by reaching out to publications and other organisations where we could contribute content—and continue to grow the lower sections in tandem.
Section 3: Content marketing is the new SEO
Summary: Long tail searches are up 68% in the last decade. Good content creators have to target niche markets, which means building robust personas when blogging about your field of expertise. This is particularly true for guest-contributors. This second Marketing Funnel diagram explains how it’s important to create three kinds of content, drawing readers from ‘what’ to ‘how’ to ‘why’… Simon Sinek anyone?
Takeaway: Could we use these three kinds of content as a way to structure our knowledge bank? Also, are we doing enough to target long tail searches?
Section 4: How to create content editors crave
Summary: Basically, there is no magic bullet or shortcut to building the top of the funnel. Taking this step would represent a commitment. The webinar did offer these five tips for getting your brand published:
- Document your content strategy
- Research your target audience and document this, so you can show it to editors
- Show expertise and get personal with stories
- Back up your points with data and compelling statistics
- Perfect your piece before submission (professional editing)
Takeaway: The webinar ahighlighted the fact that only 35% of marketers have a documented content strategy. Will taking this next step set Intrigue ahead of the curve?
Characteristics of a good content strategy:
- Content that is relevant to publications
- Non-promotional material
- Clearly-defined tone
- Must engage + educate readers
- Should set up long-term/short-term goals (with tracking metrics)
- Must dive into the ‘why’
Biggest problems with submission (according to editors):
- Promotional (48%)
- Unoriginal (20%)
- Not fit for audience (11%)
- Not professionally edited (10%)
- No data or research (8%)
Steps for building the top of the funnel:
- Create a knowledge bank + content strategy
- Make a list of target publications + research the publication’s audience
- what are your clients reading?
- do they align with your expertise?
- choose a mix of both niche + mass-market publications
- use tools like QuantCast, Compete.com to research audience
- Perfect your content
- fact check, plagiarism check + EDIT, EDIT, EDIT
- provide your own research for arguments
- supply data from sites like Data.gov, Pew Research Center, etc.
- Once you get published, build on this momentum by distributing it within your network
This blog was originally published on the Intrigue Media website
