Why content marketing is so damn important

Photo – Library of Congress
Assess the quality of the website landing page and its content and also sync my perception of the brand’s trustworthiness and credibility.

To understand why content marketing is so damn important, here’s a brief overview of the content marketing life cycle; an explanation of what content marketers and digital project managers do to make content effective, followed by detail on the key audiences, speakers, types of content and timing and delivery of content. Why is content marketing so damn important? Because people come to your website for the content.

Here’s the life cycle of content marketing:

• I’m an ___________
• My goal is to __________
• An ad or search query focuses my attention on this goal
• I click through to a landing page

Now the fun begins

I assess the quality of the website landing page and its content. This will sync my perception of the brand’s trustworthiness and credibility. This will influence my action – to signup for emails or purchase. The bonus is that I should also discover more social channels through a landing page.

The next step is key

The quality of the product or service and my experience while using it influences future interaction and referrals to other potential buyers. Good content must therefore supply a demand and be likeable.

Although brands initially just wade in and buy awareness and users, delight those users enough and they will spread the word for the brand. Then you can begin adding the rest of your users – for free.

Bad content is rampant on the web. Any brand has an opportunity to stand out from others just by delivering clear, bright, informative content on their website or social media channels that does not waste a visitor’s time.

Next post: An explanation of what content marketers and digital project managers do to make content effective.

Content Strategy Toolbox

Inspired by Ahava Leibtag and her wonderful Creating Valuable Content Checklist

You tell great stories about your business every day. Make them so good and interesting that your customers will repeat them for you. Before you build fresh content or before you deploy it from your content inventory, ask yourself if you have these tools?

I originally wrote a post – Content strategy for personal branding checklist – organizing content strategy by tasks. Your content strategy builds valuable organic content (text posts, photo galleries, storytelling video, audio/podcasts, etc.) so that people can discover awesome things about you and your company. View the Content Strategy Checklist for the overview.

Building your personal or company’s brand with content strategy means introducing yourself with content that tells people exactly what you’re passionate about. How do you tell great stories consistently?

Research the best places to find your content, build content hubs to anchor your content, create unique, nimble and usable content, then curate and share your ideas.

Hope this takeaway is helpful.

Download the Content Strategy Toolbox

 

Branded media and branded grads

It’s on. Tell me a story.

Before my eyes glaze over from one more Spam blog each and every one of you is tasked with creating content that will thrill and impress. Only content strategy and solid web writing can save us now. We need to explain ourselves in gleaming detail so that we never have to stamp an envelope holding a résumé ever again (sorry postal service, it’s over – next!).

College (or soon to be) graduates, displaced workers and soon-to-be-displaced workers need to create great content that reveals their background, expertise and passion. Don’t farm out your story.  Create your content cache, and in an era of user generated content, share your great ideas on social media channels.

Congrats Tippingpoint Labs on your new media agency. You understand that there is a wave of over 6,000 new blog posts (every 10 minutes), 1 billion YouTube videos and more than 1.5 million pieces of Facebook content (every day). But it’s the solid content that muscles its way to the crest of that wave.

The field is crowded – with junk. The bar is not that high for just mediocre. But we aspire to so much more.

2 web content inventories: Individual and set

Your website content inventory should review and prioritize not only every individual content item but also the content set as a whole. There are scripts that will crawl a site and produce all the URLs, but content inventory needs a human touch. You need to collect as much detail as possible about each page. Prepare a site content inventory and ask these questions:

Site content inventory: How effective is the frame?

• What exactly does this content set describe?
• Is the content consistent with the tone set in strategy?
• Identify the content owners, authors for this site.
• What is the life cycle of this content (repair, update schedule)?
• How well organized is this content and its frame? Could navigation improve conversion?

Prepare an individual content inventory and ask these questions:

Individual content inventory: How effective is the content?

• What exactly does this content describe?
• How accurate and how well-sourced is this content?
• Would the reader find this useful, actionable?
• Does every content item have appropriate tags and keywords?
• Is the content user-generated or professionally created?
• Can the reader share this content easily?

An accurate and deliberate inventory will help you develop your content strategy, provide a roadmap for ongoing maintenance, and contain a resource for other stakeholders and developers.

Building a web content matrix

Your content matrix is most useful if it has been updated.

Every website content project, whether creating a content surge for a new website or revamping a dated site begins with building a content matrix.

Content inventory produces a content matrix that will list every existing piece of related content. This may be time consuming and exhausting but the information collected will provide a path forward. This information will show you exactly what needs to be changed and what needs to be developed.

Audit quantity and quality

You will list every piece of content (quantity) and give it a rating (quality). You can produce your content audit on a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is a great planning tool for future content, for layering appropriate content and for informing stakeholders and other development teams where and what content exists.

Your content matrix spreadsheet should contain information like:

• Link ID – Cascading number system that shows the position or source of each page
• Page title – How are long-term care programs rated by the state?
• Page URL – http://www.njltc.org/long_term_care_state
• Page category – Long-term-care insurance
• Tags/keywords – What is this content about?
• Package (was content created as a batch, series?) – NovLTCseries
• Copy status (live, pending, or in development) – Pending
• Image status (photo, video, or other – is the asset available or pending) – Photo
• Content creator (author, author team, source) – J. Ryan
• Description of content – How New Jersey rates and sanctions long-term-care insurance
• Links from content (source) – Link to participating insurers, brochure, consumer booklet
• Source (primary sources for information) – Attorney James Smith, nj.state.gov
• Non-post/functional (PDFs, forms, registration pages, etc.) – Post
• Maintenance (will info need to be updated?) – Yes – refers to 2009 statute
• Birth date (published or created) – Nov. 8, 2009
• Quality (Outdated, redundant, trivial? Rate it 1 to 5 or A, B, C) – 1 or A

Build a hierarchy on your spreadsheet by listing live, pending and developing content. You now have a snapshot of your content and the ability to share precise information.  

Don’t stop. The content inventory is dynamic. Your matrix is most useful if it is up to date.