• 4 Tips for Giving Your Content Legs

  By Christy Barksdale | Posted May 13, 2010 | 2 Comment(s) | Filed in: Content Marketing

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  Content marketing has become a hot topic for marketing professionals across many industries. A core component of an inbound marketing strategy, content marketing can help level the playing field for many businesses — no matter their size — and is the driving force behind generating leads and building loyalty.

  However, content alone cannot deliver results. It is the powerful marriage of content and community that really has the potential to impact a company’s positioning as a thought leader, and influence buying decisions. As my colleague Christina Capadona-Schmitz stated in her “What is Content Marketing?” blog post,

  “While many understand the benefits of investing in the production of captivating content pieces, without community building activities, established distribution channels, and the internal commitment to a long-term strategy, the content will not travel far beyond the place it is published on the Web.”

  

  Here are four tips for enhancing your content footprint:                                         

  1) Know Your Audience and Their Needs

  Before content is shared, it has to be consumed by people who find it interesting and/or useful. In order for your content to appeal to your target audiences (thus enhancing its sharing potential), you must know the purpose of your marketing efforts.

  Understanding your buyer personas is crucial before any content marketing strategy can be developed. You must ask:

  • Whom am I trying to reach?
  • What are their needs?
  • What are their pain points?
  • What is important to them?
  • How do they best consume information?
  • What can I develop that will be of use to them?
  • How can I leverage my expertise to alleviate these concerns?

  2) Optimize for Searchers

  Optimizing your content to get found is crucial. Buyers today use Internet searches to make informed purchasing decisions, and while product and price are obvious factors, by offering valuable resources (free of sales pitches) your company builds trust and influence, and has a better shot at earning the sale.

  Make sure your content is easy for customers and prospects to find by incorporating targeted keywords in both on-page and off-page optimization. Use buyer persona research to determine keywords that will most likely be used by your audience; don’t get caught up in industry jargon.

  Here are some useful resources for optimizing a few specific types of content:

  • Blog Posts: SEO’s Magic Bullet
  • Videos: How to Use Video SEO to Jump to the Top of Google Search Results
  • PDFs (i.e. eBooks, white papers, case studies): What You Don’t Know About Optimizing PDFs Can Hurt You

  For short-term impact, consider activating a targeted pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to help jumpstart content consumption.

  3) Get Social

  One of the greatest satisfactions of creating content is the opportunity to share it with your community and see your ideas spread. To achieve this, here are some tactics to consider:

  • If you’re launching a new ongoing program, such as a blog or eNewsletter, notify your audience ahead of time through established means of communication.
  • If you already have a blog up and running, use it to announce new content pieces. Invite readers to browse, view or download the content, and encourage them to share it with others.
  • Share on social networks, which provide great platforms for promoting your content and engaging in conversations about the topic at hand. Also, be sure to include sharing buttons alongside your content, to encourage others to share it as well.
  • Include links to your content in your email signature. By making content a part of your daily communications, you help to keep it top-of-mind for your customers and prospects.  

  Remember: community is also about supporting your peers. Be sure to share useful resources from others in your industry, not just your own content. By supporting each other, you can develop a great community with mutually beneficial relationships.

  4) Repurpose Existing Content

  Bring new life and context to “old” information, extend its reach and provide valuable content in formats that appeal most to your varied audience preferences. For example:

  • Package a series of blog posts or presentations on a particular topic into an eBook.
  • On the flip side, break apart an eBook into a series of blog posts.
  • For more technical pieces, such as white papers, develop an educational webinar (or vice versa).
  • Customize an eBook or podcast for specific vertical markets.
  • Use recently developed content to help populate and supplement original content in your monthly eNewsletter.

  When considering new mediums for existing content, remember how your buyer personas prefer to consume information, and use formats they are comfortable with.

  Savvy B2B Marketing offers some great insight on the dos and don’ts of repurposing content. Also check out Ardath Albee’s “The Rule of 5 for B2B Content Development.”

  Putting It All Together

  Ensuring that your content gets found, consumed and shared can be a daunting task for many marketers. But, by understanding your buyer personas, optimizing your content, embracing community and offering information in multiple formats, your chances of success are much greater.

  Don’t forget that content marketing strategies are never perfect from the start – keep track of what content is resonating well with your personas and what is not, and be willing to adapt your strategy accordingly.

  So, what’s your company’s secret to giving your content legs?

  Christy Barksdale is content services manager and consultant for PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow her on Twitter: @ChristyBarks.

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• How to Determine Your Buyer Personas

  By Tracy DiMarino | Posted Jul 30, 2009 | 7 Comment(s) | Filed in: Brand Marketing, Marketing

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  Buyer personas are profiles or biographies on the distinct market segments (e.g. customers, prospects, mainstream media, bloggers) you plan to reach and influence. For a successful marketing campaign, it’s important to understand the goals, concerns and preferences of each of your buyer personas and to tailor your content and messaging accordingly. If done correctly, your target audiences will feel like you are speaking directly to them — answering their questions, addressing their concerns and using their language — thus increasing the likelihood that they will want to engage with your business.
  
  To help personalize your buyer personas and make them really come alive, it is often beneficial to give your personas names, distinct traits and even photos. Then, when creating strategy, visualize these archetypical people and direct your messaging to them.
  
  Here’s an example: When I was 16, I worked at a fast-food restaurant. Everyday I saw the same types of people come through my drive-thru. Our clientele could have been broken down into distinct buyer personas. Two very simple examples are:

  • “Mommy Melissa” the mother of three who came after coupons were released or during promotions. She usually purchased those items that were on special and was the first to notice when prices were raised. She welcomed healthy alternatives to classic fast-food items.
  • “Businessman Bob” the business professional who came every day at lunchtime. He drove a brand new car and prices didn’t phase him. He usually ordered the same items, was always in a hurry to get back to work and got agitated when things took too long.

  
  

  Looking at these buyer personas, it is obvious that “Businessman Bob” and “Mommy Melissa” have different motivations, problems, values and interests. For example, messaging about fast service, even during peak hours, would likely appeal to “Businessman Bob,” while messaging about low prices, healthy alternatives and family-friendly options would likely appeal to “Mommy Melissa.”
  
  By defining and building strategy around your buyer personas, you will be able to better target communications and content, while potentially increasing efficiency and profitability.

  Better Ingredients Make Better Buyer Personas
  

  Papa John’s knows that better ingredients make better pizza. Well, the same principle applies here: better ingredients make better buyer personas. However, in this case, your ingredients are primary and secondary research.
  
  Therefore, if you have access to primary data on your current customers, analyze it. Tap into the knowledge of sales reps and other individuals who communicate with customers on a daily basis. They can probably provide you with some insight into your regular customers, just like I was able to do in the fast food example.
  
  Find out what your customers’ motivations, concerns and attitudes are. If possible, speak with current customers.
  
  But what if you’re a startup, releasing a new product or venturing into a new market? Or, what if you just don’t have access to historical data? Do a little digging. Research third party sources to gather the information. Here are some suggestions to begin your search:

  • Look at existing publications geared toward your target market segments. What type of language do they use? How do they present their information? Do you see a lot of images, graphs, etc.? What are the hot topics they discuss?
  • Find industry blogs. Who writes them? What are they writing about?
  • Locate and browse social networks and forums that people in your target market segment use. Search for related groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and Ning. Do Twitter searches for keywords. Analyze what people are talking about online. What do they seem interested in? What challenges are they facing? What questions do they ask?
  • Do a quick keyword analysis using a keyword tool. (Google offers a free one.) What words do people search the most often? What related keywords are being used? What long-tail keywords exist and what do they say about your potential buyers?
  • Read analyst reports, news articles, government reports, etc. pertaining to your target market segments. Study related legislation. What laws and proposed legislation issues affect your market?
  • Identify sample companies that fit into your market segment. Look at their Websites. Read their annual reports. Get a good feel for their size, structure, successes and challenges. See what you can learn from them. What can you do better? How can you differentiate yourself to really speak to your potential customers?

  Once you have gathered all the ingredients, create your buyer personas by answering questions about your target audiences based on research. For example; here are a few to get started:

  • What are their problems, challenges?
  • What is important to them?
  • What influences their decision to buy or take action? 
  • What sorts of images and information appeal to them?
  • What is their social technographics profile?

  So… what do your buyer personas look like?  Share with me the resources you used and the questions you asked when creating them.

  Tracy DiMarino is an associate consultant at PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDiMarino.
  

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  Photo Credit: gailjadehamilton, sean dreilinger

• Keeping corporate blogs updated and relevant

  By Christina | Posted Dec 17, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

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  You launched a blog for your business, or helped guide your corporate client into the blogosphere.  Now weeks or months have passed, and your faced with the difficulties of keeping the content fresh and relevant.

  Here are a few potential challenges and some simple solutions to help. You’ll find the most effective way to tackle these challenges is to share relevant, timely links that have interest to your target audience.

  Audiences
  You created your corporate blog to stay connected with your audience and capture new audiences.  Now you are losing that connection or your blog is turning into a promotional vehicle.  Or possibly you are having trouble attracting new readers and subscribers.

  • To connect or reconnect with your audiences, seek feedback and invite commentary on the blog, and see what readers are interested in.
  • To stay relevant, monitor and participate in the online communities, blogs and forums where your target audiences are active.   This helps you get a feel for interests and keep a pulse on trends.
  • Understand your buyer personas.  Buyer personas are profiles or biographies on distinct market segments (e.g. customers, prospects, mainstream media, bloggers) you plan to reach and influence. David Meerman Scott (author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR), believes buyer personas are a fundamental aspect of great marketing.  Check out his full post on buyer personas.  

  Time
  You created your corporate blog as a quick, simple communication tool to provide real-time news, updates and information to your audiences.  Now it’s hard to find time in your schedule to post items, and stay updated on important news and trends.

  • Plan ahead by creating an editorial calendar of blog topics and schedule specific times for your posts each week.   
  • Invite guest bloggers to share information and expertise.
  • Not every post has to be an earth-shattering revelation, or take hours of writing and research. Time is important to your readers too, so don’t be afraid to add shorter posts, and save your longer, thought-provoking entries for another time.
  • Use RSS feed readers for quick access to the important industry and social media channels that you monitor. 

  Content
  You created your corporate blog to publish valuable content for your audiences.  You’re an expert on your topic (that’s why you author the blog in the first place), but it can be a challenge to continually produce new and useful content.

  • The simplest and most effective blog post can be the sharing of valuable and relevant links.  Link to news stories, other blog posts, resources, Websites and more.  Add your insight and position to connect to your audience.
  • Consider linking to online tools, videos, photos, tips, ideas, and lists that have use to your audience, making sure to provide proper attribution to the sources.
  • Another great advantage is that by sharing timely information, you’re blog becomes a source of timely information that your audiences will value.  It also connects you with influentials in your industry.

  Corporate Blog With Caution
  Josh Bernoff (VP of Forrester Research, co-author of Groundswell) gave some strong points on effective corporate blogging in his Dec. 9 post, “People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it.” 
  
  The post centers around a Forrester Research project from Q2 2008 on consumers trust of information sources such as personal email, traditional media, social media, and more, with corporate blogs recording the lowest trust levels at 16 percent of participants. Click here for the full post.  
  
  Bernoff believes that blogs created exclusively about companies and products are the possible causes of the low trust ratings.
  
  Says Bernoff in the post, “If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customers’ problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. This takes time and effort, but it will enhance your company’s reputation and it’s worth it…” He also states a few tips for corporate bloggers including that a blog “has to be more about your customers than it is about you,” and to “adjust your strategy based on your objectives.” 

  Blog Health Check
  Unsure if your corporate blog is trusted by readers? Check out a great resource published by Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research, in his Dec. 10 post Health Check: How Trusted Is Your Corporate Blog? Owyang describes his methodology as a "very simple heuristic health check to gauge whether your corporate blog is going to be trusted by your readers." 

  What are some of the challenges you are facing with your corporate blog?   

   

  Christina Capadona-Schmitz is a PR 20/20 consultant, who has been with the Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm since March 2006.  She can be found on Twitter @christinacs.

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