Content strategy – probably most important activity with regards to lead generation
CXL Institute
As usual the more I dive into Growth Marketing course from CXL marketing I find myself increasingly amazed by the amount of information I have learned over such a brief period, just 8 weeks and 4 more to go.
The course is as advertised only for the disciplined. There is a lot of material to go through and you need to work every day during the week to be able to finish the course in the 12-week time frame.
I have not spent this much time studying since I’ve finished my university courses.
For more information check out CXL Institute Growth marketing minidegree.
Content marketing and content strategy misconception
What is the point of having content on your blog? Plain and simple – it is to have something that others can link back to your site. Your product pages will not be linked as often as a good piece of blog content might be. That is why you want to have a blog, that’s why you want to have a content marketing strategy. So, you can have back links to your site.
This is important because it builds your domain authority.
Next important part to demystify is the word strategy itself – the word strategy means plan. That is it. So, your marketing content strategy is your marketing content plan with which you want to reach your goal, i.e. your business goal.
Your mission statement and connecting with your audience with empathy
What is the science of connecting with the audience? Data driven empathy is all about the audience themselves and the topics and what they care about.
The first thing you should do is put up our content on a mission and we are going to build first a foundation and do this with the audience in mind.
Audience is X, gets information Y for benefits Z.
This is as close to a formula you can get.
It is proven and it works.
When you begin your journey define who you talk to, what you talk about, and why they care? What is in it for me? Why should they care? And briefly, when I say content, I am talking about your website, your blog, your newsletters, every email you send, everything that appears in your social streams, every phrase you rank for.
Your body of work, your content, all those things. Your search, your social, your email content. Videos, infographics, podcast, classes, whatever. White papers, webinars, and anything else you publish is where that audience gets that information for that benefit.
In a survey by Content Marketing Institute and Marketing crafts – 48% of companies that have a documented mission statement say that they are successful in marketing. They get a four out of five in terms of success. Companies that do not do it are very unlikely, only 15% are as successful. 57% say they are not successful in marketing. In total only 28% have documented their mission statement.
The marketers who document their mission statement are three times more likely to succeed. The Mission statement makes an amazing call to action.
You can repurpose your mission statement in many ways to fit your various call to actions you have on your website.
Three main sources of topics for you to benefit from
First: Keyword research
Research to figure out what people want, and we are going to do some of that.
Try this with any key phrase or keyword. Just by typing into google you can find a plethora of ideas, but you can take it to the next level with keywordtool.io. run your keyword in the engine and it will suggest a myriad of different phrases. You will probably find a couple of dozen that could be useful in your content strategy.
Second: Q&A websites
Q&A websites are also a really effective way to see what’s happening out there in your industry or with your audience.
A good site is answerthepublic.com which you can use to find most common asked questions. It sort’s them out in a diagram with comparisons, prepositions, questions and finally sums them alphabetically.
Next is Quora – with just a cursory glance you can find various topics you could write about. And you should use this to your advantage wherever possible.
Third: Listening
Listening is the ultimate source of topics.
Finally, the third point – listening. By being careful and observant you can find a gold mine anywhere. In your sent folder, through conversations with your collogues or friends or customers or staff. From other media. Everywhere and anywhere. Just pay close attention and be aware of what is going on.
The power of research
Before long, might be even before you start this journey you will realize that it’s not that some content is good, and some is bad. But rather some content is amazing, and some is horrible. More specifically 75% of articles get zero links from other articles. And half of all articles get two or fewer social media interactions. That’s not good for search. On the other hand a tiny fraction get’s thousands, hundreds of thousands of interactions.
The advice for creating content that achieves a high level of both links and shares. You must concentrate on opinion forming, authoritative content or well researched and evidenced content.
In other words, strong opinions and original research. Those are the two most powerful formats for content.
Another fantastic sentence by Sonia Simone, chief content officer at copy blogger – “Don’t take shortcuts they take too long.”.
Formats
Always keep in mind that content is more than text. Staring at a wall of text is boring. Anything longer than three sentences in a paragraph will get skimmed, and walls of text get skipped. Keep your paragraphs short.
Use visuals, when possible, at appropriate.
Visuals can be both interesting and more informative. Teaching that visitor that lesson faster.
Always remember that you can repurpose your text blog post into an infographic, video or a podcast or something else.
Always look for an opportunity to leverage something that was just text into more compelling formats such as images or video.
Itemizing big things will also usually work to your benefit.
The bottom of the page is less prominent than the top. Keep this in mind.