Cision 2013 Ebook ContentMarketingforPR

POWER YOUR STORY
Content Marketing Essentials for PR

an ebook from
POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR
table of contents
4
5 6 7
What is Content Marketing?

Taking your content to the next level What is content marketing? The basics
11
11 12 14 15 16 18 20 22 24 27 29 31 33 34 34 34 35 38 39 41 45 46 47 51
Creating & Curating Valuable Content Know your audience

Deliver real value Brick vs. feather content Conquering writers block Curating Content Publish
20
Optimizing Your Content

Search Engine Optimization On-page optimization: all about keywords External search factors Putting it all together
29
What About Social?

Engaging with your audience Influencer Identification How to engage with your influencers Participate Mention A special note on advocates Using social for content ideas
38
Cision Blog

In the beginning Continued growth through content Paid amplification Why do you need amplification? 4 benefits to amplification Examples of amplified content A/B testing
44
Amp It Up!

53
53 55 56 58
Analyzing and Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts

Creating goals What is the value of a page view? What are the profitable actions on your website for Lead Generation? Bringing it all together
58
In Summary
us.cision.com ca.cision.com
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
2
Copyright Cision, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6/13
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content marketing is to 2013 what social media marketing was to 2007. Five or 10 years ago, some PR pros and marketers bought into the concept of integrating social media into their campaigns and some did not. There were long arguments over whether or not bloggers should be considered journalists (an argument youd be hard-pressed to win now.) Today, its hard to imagine a PR or marketing campaign without a social component; social has just become another piece of how we power our story. As websites and social networks look for new models to provide content and still drive revenue as more and more content moves online, branded content will continue to rise and provide communicators with unique opportunities to amplify their stories. Dont get left in the dust; begin exploring how to get started in content marketing now.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
4
taking your content to the next level

Allianz Global Assistance, a leader in travel insurance, knew they had a great story to tell. Their website already contained engaging posts for travelers like The Super-Quick Guide for Applying for a Passport, Six Tips for Cheap International Travel and Ten Surprising Essentials to Take on Your Cruise. They were on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. They shared relevant content with their community and were a trusted resource. But they werent sure how to get to the next step in building their brand with a new audience and all with limited resources. Content marketing has easily become the most actively researched area for our business, explained Daniel Durazo, director of communications for Allianz Global Assistance.
We had this vague idea that we needed to do something with content marketing, and kept hearing about content marketing, but didnt know what to do to take that first step.
Daniel Durazo
A tightened budget had already pushed Allianz to stop outsourcing their media distribution and PR efforts, but it was content marketing that ended up being the key to their success.
Allianz started using paid amplification to place links to their posts as recommended stories on top publisher websites-- like USA Today, the New York Times and TMZ-- through an algorithm that served up their stories to readers who were most likely to be interested in their content. (But more about that later in the Amp It Up! chapter of this ebook.) What Dan quickly found was that the Allianz content was attracting a new audience and bringing people to their website. Once they began feeding an RSS feed of their Travel Tips to premium publishers through paid amplification, the Travel Tips section quickly began outranking their own website on Google. The RSS feed is turnkey, Dan explained. Once our content began hitting the big name websites, we immediately saw an increase in all of our metrics and increased visits to our website by 20 percent. Creating great content was not the end for Allianz; it was just the beginning
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
5
what is content marketing?

Content Marketing isnt new. Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable and engaging content to a target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers. Its the vital link between awareness and a profitable customer action and its something that marketing professionals have been doing for decades -- via email campaigns, collateral and traditional advertising. Now, with the advent of social media, online ads and other amplification tools, content marketing has become the latest trend in the PR & marketing industry. You cant go online without seeing an article or blog post mentioning this buzzword and why your company should be putting together a game plan (if you havent done so already).
When Google published the Zero Moment of Truth ebook in 2011, they established quite a few surprising facts about consumer behaviors:
What ZMoT tells us with these facts is that traditional PR and marketing alone is not enough to satisfy the voracious appetites of consumers for content when they make a decision to learn more about us, seek a referral or buy our product. We need digestible content readily available to consumers, and, not just on our website, but, where they are seeking information and digesting content. Americans now spend as much time online as they do watching TV, according to Forrester Research, yet only 15% of media ad budget money is spent online. According to a study by Shopper Science on behalf of Google, The average shopper uses 10.4 sources or information (ranging from recommendations from friends & family to magazine articles) to make a decision, in 2011, which is up from 5.3 sources in 2010.
70%
of Americans look at product reviews before purchasing.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
6
As Jay Baer, marketing strategist, speaker and author and president of the social media and content marketing consultancy Convince & Convert, describes in Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype:
Even with so many new tools like Facebook, Twitter and beyond, few businesses are actually doing anything markedly different than they used to. Facebook is a fancy photo scrapbook and Twitter is often just a tiny press-release machine. Its the same shouting with a different megaphone.
Most marketers want to jump right in and begin pushing content via all owned media channels. While there is no better time than the present, its important that before you begin promoting your content on any platform that you have a solid plan and measurable goals. In other words, it has never been more important to develop a strategy for your brand before you dive in.
the basics
There are 5 essential components to any Content Marketing Plan:
creation, curation, optimization, amplification and analysis.

Creating engaging content on a consistent basis is probably the hardest part and the number one reason why
65%
of B2B marketers outsource their content creation.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
7
Its not easy to continually produce interesting blog posts and other pieces of content (not to mention the type of content that your audience is going to want to consume and share across their own social channels); but were here to help. This ebook will offer you tips for planning ahead for your campaigns and ways of repurposing content that youve already produced for other platforms. Curation is another vital element of any Content Marketing Campaign. Online content curation is a great marketing tool with unusually broad filtering capabilities and information selection that can be used to develop and promote a business. By promoting external stories, it allows you to get in front of your audience and be seen as a thought leader and not just someone who always promotes your own brand. Take other articles from around the web that you think your audience would be interested in and promote them across your channels. Youll be seen as a resource to your fans and followers, nurture existing relationships and youll begin to make friends with influencers across your industry. Beyond creating and curating this content, you need to be ready to optimize this content on the Web. Your content needs to be easy for consumers and search engines to understand and find. A great article may have a headline that is esoteric and clever, but it doesnt mean that anyone will ever search for (or find) it, which will stop your audience from discovering your content. SEO helps search engine algorithms and social sites figure out why your content is relevant to your audience. So, what do you do once youve created, curated and amplified your content and youre ready to share it? Amplify it! Many of you are already organically sharing your content on and engaging with your audience on your social channels, but did you also know that you can promote your blog posts and other curated content on a huge network of publisher sites? Well talk to you about some new amplification methods that have come on the scene to help you gain visibility on thousands of sites including Time, CNN and Fast Company.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
8
Last but definitely not least, measuring the results of your content marketing campaigns is probably the single most important thing you can do, yet 33 percent of B2B marketers and 41 percent of B2C marketers cited the inability to measure as a significant challenge.
2B
B2
33%
41%
Tools like Google Analytics have made it easier to measure engagement, but how do you decide which key performance indicators (KPIs) are most important to your brand? Should you care about unique visits to your website or is social sharing most important to your company? Well help you figure out what KPIs to measure and how to gain visibility into how your content is performing. Then, you can use the results to modify the content you are creating based on what gets the most attention and engagement from your audience.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
9
CREATING & CURATING VALUABLE CONTENT
Creating & Curating Valuable Content
creating & curating valuable content: know your audience

Creating valuable content cannot be accomplished by accident. Before you put pen to paperor fingers to keyboard, as these times would have ityou need a strategy. And crucial to your strategy is knowing your audience.
Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer goes as far as to say that knowing your audience is the No. 1 rule for writing
or at the very least, persuasive writing. And persuasive writing is what PR and marketing professionals do on a daily basis right? Your audience might not be obvious to you. You may even think your online audience is a downright mystery. Dont worry! There are many resources out there that can help you identify the consumers of your content. To start pinpointing demographics and behavior, Jason shares that there are broad-based research projects like The Social Habit that provide statistical insight into Internet and social networking site usage, mobile usage and content consumption habits. The Pew Internet & American Life Project is another set of studies that has done extensive and continuous research with regard to how the Internet-at-large is being used, with demographics, habits and content in mind. There are also many free analytics tools that will allow you to identify your brands audiences on specific platforms. For instance, Google Analytics can give you a sense of whos visiting your blog or website where your audience is located, how they were directed to your posts, what theyre reading and what their attention span is for certain topics, to name a few factors. Facebook Insights can paint a picture of the demographics and reach that may dictate your social community. There are also emerging tools, like Demographics Pro, which charge a monthly rate and go deeper to segment your Twitter audience, as well as Twitter analytics services that have recently started charging fees, like Crowdbooster. Aside from the numbers-based demographics, there may be other audience-revealing questions you want answered before you commit to producing certain types of content. Is your audience comprised of customers, prospects or stakeholders? If youre a B2B
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
11
company or if youre a B2C company, is your content audience mostly other companies or direct consumers? Simply,
what type of content does your audience like to consume?

These may be questions you answer in time. The longer you are producing and publishing content, and the more you are interacting with your audience via online comments, e-mails, events or social media, the more obvious they will become. Here are some examples of how to uncover your audience:
want to know whos downloading your white papers or tip sheets?

Get customers and prospects to fill out a form with demographic information in order to access your content.
want to know who your blog audience is?

Use analytics to reveal the most trafficked or read stories on your company blog.
want to know what stories to cover next?

Ask your audience! A poll or survey could help you plan your content when youre getting started. Youll begin to piece together an audience profile that doesnt just reveal demographics, but the needs and motivations that are drawing an audience to your content. When you know your audience, youll know what stories to write and curate, what stories to share, what works and what simply doesnt. It may take trial and error, but it will help you clearly define contents role in your business goals. And like most goals, its important to monitor and measure your contents performance, so you can evolve with your audience.
deliver real value

You know that you have to write and produce content for an audience. Thats a start. But how can you be sure your content is delivering real value to your audience?
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
12
For one, the conversation cant be one-sided. Business 2 Community stresses that both the content creators and audience need to engage with one another in the content-value exchange. In order for there to be value, there needs to be trust. The kind of trust that is associated with reading an informative, sincere or well-crafted storynot an advertising missive that brags about how great your company or product is. How do you go about instilling this trust?
Your content must be a lot of things at once:

It must be timely and relevantwhatever content youre producing has to address an issue, trend or problem that affects the reader, their company or their industry, at present. It must be both varied and consistentsubject matter should rotate depending on whats fresh, newsworthy or lively, but the editorial style and sensibilities, and frequency at which you are producing content for an audience, should remain stable. It must be well-written and well-produced, and include a certain expertise that is unique to your brand. You want to give a perspective or advice that has meaning to the audience, while informing your brands identity. You must call your audience to actiontheir interaction with your brand shouldnt end with the first exposure to your content, and you have to figure out how to hold the audiences attention. If your content incorporates these things, it stands a good chance to be read, viewed or listened to, and youre one step closer to reaching your marketing goals for that content.
If you deliver to your audience a value they cant get anywhere else, they will keep coming back.
At this point, you may be unsure what types of content you should be writing or producing. Frankly, there are tons of options, and you may be wondering what types of content would best fit your B2B or B2C brand.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
13
A few types of content marketing include:

Direct email newsletters White papers Apps Branded webinars or podcasts Videos Case studies Events Blog posts Tip sheets Social media posts Web pages Infographics E-books
Much more than the old-fashioned press release, huh? You might want to try some of these, or even a mix of all of these, at some point in your business plan.
brick vs. feather content

Now that weve listed different types of content, you may be wondering what types perform the best, are easiest to produce, or provide the biggest return on investment. Thus enters the age-old trick questionwhich weighs more, 10 pounds of bricks or 10 pounds of feathers? And how the heck does that apply to content marketing?
Chris Sietsema at Convince & Convert explains bricks as those larger content productions such as research reports, events, white papers, video series and mobile apps. Essentially, these are the content contributions that take more time and money to produce, but could see a large payoff. Feathers are the smaller, low-stakes pieces of content, comprised of simple text and photo content and usually shared on blogs and social media. Both bricks and feathers have their advantages and disadvantageswhich is like saying, they weigh the same10 pounds.
Chris Sietsema
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
14
Bricks can serve well to establish a coveted sense of thought leadership for your company. They also tend to fare better in terms of SEO rankings, measurable metrics and content lifespan. When you consider research, white papers and apps, these tend to be examples of evergreen contentthe content that will always be relevant to your audience, according to Search Engine Journal. But these larger, better-planned, higher-budget content pieces can require many people and resources to produce, with little guarantee as to its traction or popularity. Feathers, by contrast, do better to show your role as a news maker as Sietsema points out, with less resources required, a lower opportunity cost and a quicker turnaround time. Though, the content dispatches that are considered feathers may have a short lifespan and a diminished SEO potential. When considering bricks, feathers or a healthy mix of both, keep your resources in mind. Do you have the time, money and people-power to reach for that brass ring of thought leadership? Do you have the ability to produce daily posts that are newsy, entertaining and appeal to your social audience? Both Convince & Convert and Social Benzene provide insightful infographics that further break down the effectiveness, difficulty and usage of bricks and feathers.
conquering writers block

Dont worryit happens to the best of us. Breathe! Writers block, while inconvenient and sometimes painful to those experiencing it, can be a great opportunity for your brand to vary your content, try your hand at creating new types of content or dip into the archives. Take a step back and assess - what type of content does your audience like? Sometimes finding a story idea is as easy as going back to the analytics dashboard, finding your most popular, clicked-through, talked-about content piece, and grabbing a keyword to ignite an idea for a new story. Havent done a multimedia post in a while? Try your hand at an infographic, video, or image-based content. Havent been social in a while? Try your hand at user-sourced contentsuch as polls, surveys, contests and testimonials.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
15
While this might sound counterintuitive, dont be afraid to ask others to write or produce the content for you. Thats rightgetting an expert, guest blogger or commenter to fill in is a great way to cheat writers block, as well as getting noticed for your thought leadership and connections.
And of course, dont forget to repurpose your older content. Companies often face writers block because theyve been actively producing content for a long time and lose sight of what they may already have. Did you sponsor a panel event that may translate well to a tip sheet? Did you reply to a testimonial that might work for an e-mail newsletter? Would snippets of a white paper make for a good blog post? Be sure to scour your archive for content that fits a current opportunity. If youre looking for more ideas on how to conquer writers block, check out this Cision Blog post, 15 Ways to Beat Blogger Fatigue. The tips dont just apply to bloggers, but content creators as well. Not to mentionthis is a great way for us to repurpose our own content! (See what we did there?)
curating content
Heres something you may have not considered. Thought leadership is more than great content creationits also about curating great content. Ever hear the maxim, You can know someone by who their friends are? That generally holds true when it comes to content. You can get to know a company or brand by who they read, who influences them, who they admire, who they engage with or whose content they share. If you want to be a content leader, it cant be all about broadcastingyou have to listen too. You have to recognize the best practices in your industry, the experts who shape your mission and business goals, and the people who are handily capable of entertaining or informing your own thought leadership. As Beth Kanter points out,
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
on Facebook, the average user posts 90 items of content each month.

Beth Kanter
16
With this overabundance of data, a content curator offers high value to anyone looking for quality content. Because content takes time to read, view and process, there is a value attached to the content creators who display this sense of focus and attention in curation. How do you tackle content curation? Start by reading blog rolls of interest, following the experts in your industry on social media, and keeping up with news articles and trends. The more you read, the more youll find out who the experts are for certain niche topics in your space. In your blog or online resources, you might want to start making blog or reading recommendations, roundups of news, linking to other content creators online properties and using content creators platforms to continue the conversation and initiate a relationship. You can do this by simply choosing a blog reader and adding a few dozen blogs to your feed that are relevant to you industry, brand or organization. Cisions SVP of Digital Content Heidi Sullivan shares her own strategy:
I dont have enough time to read 50 blogs every day. I get that. Im busy as are most PR pros and marketers. So Ive chosen the 30-or-so blogs that I really do love (and I probably add one or two a month) and I scan through the headlines every morning, choose what is relevant to me, and read through the post. I probably read 6-10 posts a day and it takes me about half an hour before I start my day. It keeps me updated on the latest trends and connected to the people that truly influence my industry.
You may also decide you would like to publish tips, advice, infographics, guest posts or republish posts (all with permission, of course!) by the content creators who would have the greatest influence on your audience. Content curation can deliver that aforementioned value-exchangein that it provides a fresh perspective to your audience, while getting them to see you in an esteemed light.
17
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
publish
So are you ready to push the Publish button? Ready to send your e-mail to clients and prospects? Is your content seconds away from going live online, in a webcast or on a social channel? Just remembercreating and curating valuable content is a process that takes time. Like most elements of a strategic business plan, after you publish your content, its important to monitor and measure your resultshow the audience responds, whos engaging with what types of content, and what types of bricks and feathers are landing or floating in the context of your content marketing plan. Monitor, measure and then repeat your successes and modify your missteps. Of course, creating and curating valuable content is just part of the battleyou also have to find a way to lead people to your content and, to be colloquial, get some eyeballs on the page.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
18
OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT
optimizing your content

According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engines natural or un-paid (organic) search results. Sounds pretty scientific, right? What happened to using our creativity to create great content like in the previous chapter? In fact, if employed well, SEO can actually require more creativity and finesse than creating the content itself and have a significant impact on the success of your content.
Great content can only meet its true potential if it can be easily found and consumed.
Optimizing content for search engines will help get your content in front of more people who are searching for topics related to it. Optimizing content for readability pulls your audience in and keeps them on your content - often times resulting in the reader sharing that content with their own audiences, which amplifies your content even further.
search engine optimization

SEO, has been around since the first search engines. In that time, the trades and practices of SEO have changed significantly as search engines and SEOs have played a cat and mouse game with each other. Search engines strive to provide the best content for what people are searching for. SEO professionals work to make sure their own - or their clients - content is easily found. The changing nature of SEO has created a multi-billion dollar industry.
Why would companies go to such lengths to get their content to rank highly? Lets look at the numbers.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
20
92% 61% 59% 53%
of adults online use search engines. of online consumers use a search engine to look up product information before making a buying decision. of adults online use a search engine every day. of people click on the first link of a search result.
The importance in getting found in search engines is undeniable. As such, some SEO companies have taken to exploiting loopholes in search algorithms to get content artificially ranked higher. This practice had short-term benefits for SEOs, but each time a new search engine update would come out, it would knock some of that artificially boosted content out, and potentially deindex entire sites from the search engine. With its Panda and Penguin updates, Google seems to have had the final laugh. Old SEO loopholes like link farms seldom work anymore, and now were seeing a shift from companies calling themselves SEO agencies to Digital Content or Inbound Marketing agencies. Why the change? Because when it comes to SEO, theres nothing more important than fresh content.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
21
So should you worry about SEO? Yes! If anything, SEO is more valid now than it ever has been. If your content isnt being found in search, youre missing out on a huge audience. The 61% of consumers who use search to make a buying decision will never see your product or brand. Thats a huge missed opportunity.
on-page optimization: all about keywords

Now we know why SEO is necessary, but how do you get started? Well, the foundation of SEO is keywords. Keywords are the terms that people type into a search engine. When creating your content, define what the content is about in a few keywords. If youre writing about your brands new organic dog food, you can use the keyword dog food, but you may be better off being more specific and using organic dog food instead. Make your keywords something that people unfamiliar with your brand will search for. Using your brand name as a keyword will only net an audience who already knows your brand. With good keywords, youre targeting those who dont.
A great way to look up the popularity of keywords is Googles Keyword Tool. Its an industry standard tool and its free!
Once youve figured out your keywords, remember to optimize from the top down. Search engines read content like human beings - in English, thats from the top down, left to right. As they scan the content of the page, search engines are looking to determine what a page is about.
The three most important places they look are:

Your title tag Your headline (H1 tag) The first paragraph of your content
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
22
Include your keywords in these three key places, preferably toward the beginning of each. If possible, try to use your keyword within the first one or two words in your title and headline. A few other tips and tricks when working with keywords and editing your content: Use Alt and Title tags with images Search engines are getting smarter, but they still arent to the point where they can determine the 1,000 words a picture is worth. Help them out by including an Alt and Title tag that describes what is in the image. This helps get your images indexed in image search, and also is used by screen readers that are used by people with visual disabilities. Link to other content using relevant anchor text When linking to your website or someone elses website, do not do this: Want to learn more about our premium organic dog food? Click here! Search engines use anchor text (the text that is linked in a hyperlink) to help decipher what the linked page is about. Click here does not describe the page that you are linking to. Instead, link what youre describing: Learn more about our premium organic dog food.
This link tells search engines that the page youre linking to is about organic dog food. Include a meta description of your page Meta descriptions are invisible to users who are reading your posts, but they play an important role in search engine results pages. Your meta description is your elevator pitch to users on a search results page.
By default, Google search results include your meta description text and highlight the keywords someone searched for.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
23
These simple techniques make a big impact on how well search engines can read and categorize your content. There are other factors that determine how well a page ranks - according to Google, there are over 200 factors - but getting these basics right is a great start.
external search factors

Although it seems that youve already done a ton of work optimizing your content through keywords, links and more, your SEO work has only just begun. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of external factors that search engines take into account when ranking content. Here are a few that you can work on:
Inbound links
The number and quality of inbound links to your content helps determine its popularity and importance. It is a major factor that search engines use to rank where your page will show up in search results. This is why its often said that...
...inbound links are the currency of the Web.

SEOs have tried many techniques for building links, including buying links from websites, spamming comments on blogs with links, creating link farms, etc. As search engines have gotten smarter, these techniques have had a diminishing effect on rankings. But the one thing that has remained a best practice is to constantly create valuable new content. Creating valuable new content increases your likelihood that others will link to it. The more people who see your content, the more links and social shares your content may receive. The more links and social shares it receives, the higher it should rank in searches. The higher it ranks in searches, the more views it receives. Repeat. Search engines put a lot of emphasis on the authority of a domain when determining how content is ranked. A domains authority is made up of all of the inbound links and social shares to every page on the domain. When you have a popular piece of content that gets a lot of great traffic, social shares and inbound links, that piece of content is actually helping other pieces of content on your site rank better. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. This is a purely organic way to receive inbound links and is the preferred method by search engines everywhere. us.cision.com ca.cision.com
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
24
The power of a domain Look up just about any noun in Google and you will see a link to wikipedia.org toward the top of your search results. Wikipedia.org as a domain has established millions of inbound links because of its vast content. Even pages that dont have many inbound links on Wikipedia still rank higher than pages with more inbound links on other sites because the Wikipedia domain is such an authority. Google Authorship In the summer of 2011, Google Authorship launched to the world. The idea was to establish a direct link between an author and his/ her content. Linking all of your content together under your profile gives it extra credibility and visibility. It also displays your content with your profile picture on search results pages, which can increase the likelihood that people will notice and click on it.
Optimizing content for readership People get bored easily. Liven up your content to keep readers engaged! Deliver value in your content As mentioned previously, the #1 rule of content marketing is to deliver content that is valuable to your audience. If youre not delivering real value to them, youre just wasting your time and theirs. Ask yourself, What piece of information will people be able to take away from this content that will help them in the future? If that answer is only, Information about my product, youre doing it wrong. Get to the point Use the inverted pyramid approach to writing that journalists use. Start with the most newsworthy information and give details later.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
25
Keep it short With the exception of an ebook or white paper, keep your online content short. Get to the point because every...
100 extra words only gets 4.4 seconds of attention.
Drop the jargon Use terms that your audience knows. Jargon can be confusing and will push the reader away from your content. Break information into sections This makes your content easier to digest and allows your reader to scan to pieces of content that interest them. Use sub-headlines where possible to distinguish sections of copy. Multimedia Break up long paragraphs of text with images. Use imagery to explain something that would otherwise take 1,000 words. Graphs, infographics, photos, headshots, videos, presentations, etc. go a long way in making your content more readable and shareable. Pull out key pieces of information Highlight important pieces of content within your site. Since most people are simply scanning your content, pulling out key facts and figures will help engage the reader and bring them back into the details of the content. Make sharing easy Include buttons on the page that allow your readers to easily share the content with others. Definitely include Facebook Likes, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. For more visual content, include a Pinterest Pin it button.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
26
Pull readers to other actions Now that you have the readers attention, keep them engaged by recommending further action. Related articles are a good start, but also think about how to move them to the next step of the buying cycle. Dont force it upon them though. A simple link to your related product or to sign up for a newsletter will help get people who want more information to it as seamlessly as possible. Combining ease of readability with some basic SEO techniques will help get your content found and shared organically on the Web. However, in the age of social media, theres no reason to just sit around and wait for traffic to come your way.
putting it all together

There is no doubt about it: SEO is a lot of work. But SEO is an absolute necessity. Great content is only as effective when its read by your target audience. Ensuring that your content can be found when that audience is searching for it is key. A few years ago, Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote about an IM conversation with another blogger who argued that SEO wasnt necessary if you produce good content. He wrote, While I see where the blogger comes from and I agree to a point that search rankings look after themselves when you build a useful blog Im also convinced that knowing some basic SEO and implementing it on a site can have a significant impact. What Darren is getting at here is that there isnt a clear division between SEO and great content. Great content is optimized for your audience to find it. Knowing some of the basics will help you reach the next level. Paul Boag, co-founder of the web design agency Headscape in the UK, wrote an article about the SEO for Smashing Magazine and highlighted that, The inconvenient truth is that the best person to improve your ranking is you. He adds, Your primary objective should be better content, not higher rankings. Staying up-to-date on SEO tactics and continuing to focus on producing great content is worth the investment of your time and will remain the first step in getting your content to your target audience.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
27
WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL?
What About Social?
what about social? social medias role in content marketing
Content marketing and content creation has never been more predominant than it is right now. With the advent of social media, most marketers want to jump right in and begin pushing content to all of their social platforms as fast as possible. While its tempting to use social media as a place to simply shout your message, it defeats the true purpose of the channel. Consistent engagement with your audience is the vital key to success in social media and will establish your brand as a source of valuable content.
engaging with your audience

As you push your content through your social media platforms, it will organically spark conversations with your audience. Keep in mind that these are social platforms and you should be engaging them. The goal with content marketing via social media is not only to offer something useful but to have a two-way conversation. Address questions that your followers may have, thank them for retweets, comment on their thoughts about your content. With sites like Twitter, you may be limited with how you can respond. If thats the case, link them back to content that youve created that will address their question. It can be a daunting task, but be sure to respond to the majority of comments and mentions you are receiving on social platforms. This is especially important and perhaps most obvious on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but ensure that you respond to blog comments as well. Keep in mind that this also applies to individuals that may have a differing opinion on some of your content.
A healthy debate keeps things objective and allows for another point of view.
One way to engage your audience and offer an avenue for debate is by hosting a weekly Twitter chat. Consider this content marketing on the fly. If you arent familiar, a Twitter chat is an interactive conversation set at a specific time via Twitter. Each participant uses the same predefined hashtag in their response so the conversation can be followed via that hashtag. This gives you an opportunity to pose topical questions and get your audiences feedback on pertinent issues within your specific industry. Its a great way to get your audience involved with your Twitter handle, to establish your brand as a thought leader and get content ideas for future posts.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
29
What About Social?
Facebook is where the majority of online social time is spent. In fact, a recent study showed that...
10.8%
of all time online is spent on facebook.
83%
of time on social network is spent on facebook.
So it goes without saying that your brand has to have a presence on facebook. However, it is also the most personal social network of the bunch and your brand will be competing with your audiences family and friends for attention--so you must offer something exceptionally useful with your posts or you will get lost in the shuffle. This is where the idea of being a Youtility comes into play. Jay Baer describes a Youtility as marketing so useful, people would pay you for it.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
Sell something and you make a customer. Help someone, and you make a customer for life,
Jay Baer
30
What About Social?
Establish yourself as a valuable resource for your audience and you will distinguish your brand from the competition and be seen as much more than just another company in your space. The Chicago RedEye mobile app,
is a great example of a Youtility. The application includes one of the most accurate train and bus trackers for the Chicago Transit Authority which informs commuters of when their next ride will be available. It also includes a dining and drinks section that uses the GPS in your smartphone to suggest places to eat or drink around you. Conveniently, all the RedEye news and classifieds are also a click away. As previously mentioned, social media is inherently social and we need to act as we would in other social situations by engaging with others, being helpful and openly discussing trends in our industry.
influencer identification
While posting your message on your own shared pages may get the attention of your biggest fans and advocates, one of the best ways to build audience on social media is through identifying and engaging influencers. Though building these relationships takes time, the benefit of having a person with an influential voice advocate for you is more than worth the commitment. How do you determine the influencers in your space? How will you measure their influence? These are great questions to ask and questions you should have the answers to before you begin your social content marketing journey.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
31
What About Social?
Identifying influential blogs in your industry can be as easy as searching for keywords or topics of interest on a blog search tool like Google Blog Search. Look at the numbers: How often do they post? How many people are commenting and engaging with the content? How many people Like, Share or Re-tweet each post? Does this blog share their number of subscribers? These are all key indicators of a blog that youd like to get mentioned on in the future. When it comes to Twitter, you can easily establish the users that youd like to turn into brand ambassadors. Run a Twitter search on a topic or hashtag and look at the users that come up. How often do they mention your industry? Do they have influential followers? How many followers do they have? How often do they tweet? What is their tone and how often are they interacting with others? LinkedIn has a section on their website that allows you to follow posts from users they view as top influencers across a variety of sectors. Its tough to become a recognized influencer on LinkedIn, as the list contains the likes of Barack Obama, Jack Welch and Sir Richard Branson; however, LinkedIn has started taking applications to expand their list of influencers. Only those with quality content will make the cut, so you can rest assured that anyone listed as an influencer on the site network is the real deal. Regardless of platform, however, one fact almost always bubbles to the surface: influencers talk to each other. , When talking about Cisions custom influencer reports--which use dozens of social metrics based on keyword analysis to identify the most influential people in a particular space-- Cisions social media manager, Lisa Larranaga Denten, said, The numbers dont lie. Once Ive identified a group of influencers based on metrics, I always notice that those influencers talk to each other, link to each other and cite each others work.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
32
What About Social?
Influencers talk to each other within a particular niche community. Immersing yourself in that community will help you spot trends as they emerge. One of our favorite statistics (that we originally read on Rohit Bhargavas Influential Marketing Blog) is that an average of about 1% of any population will be active content creators, 9% will be participants and the other 90% will simply consume that content online. If that stat is true, then our influencers are the ones producing content, commenting and sharing. The moral of the story is that influencers are out there and the best way to reach them is by truly knowing and participating in your digital community. Using a social media monitoring tool or media database can prove to be an invaluable resource and an investment that all companies should be willing to make. Monitoring social media for mentions of keywords that are important to your industry will give you an idea of who is influential in the space. Cisions media database provides an influencer score based on a number of different criteria which allows users to get an idea of how influential a contact is. Lastly, after youve identified the contacts you consider influential, read their content and take notice of who they cite to determine who they consider influential. Who is influencing your influencers? Often times you will discover contacts that youve missed and you can add them to your list!
how to engage with your influencers

Forming relationships with your influencers is important because the impact and reach of your content is amplified when your influencers share it also. It helps the message/content resonate with the community because it has been endorsed by a trusted third party. This is particularly important because according to oBixMedia,
74%
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
of consumers say they rely on social media to help them with buying decisions.
33
What About Social?
So how do you go about turning your influencers into brand ambassadors and content subscribers? Participate and engage with their content, then mention and recognize them as influential.
participate
The best way to forge relationships with influencers is to actively engage their content. This includes commenting on their blog posts, retweeting them and liking their posts on Facebook. This way, you gain recognition through participation and they will be more apt to reciprocate. Then, when you reach out to them to pitch a story or push your content to them via email, they will be familiar with your brand because of your prior interactions.
mention
Through actively participating and engaging with an influencers content, you will undoubtedly come across some things you think would be beneficial to share with your audience. When this happens, its a good idea to give your influencers recognition. This can be as simple as giving them a retweet or mentioning them in a blog post and linking to their content. By recognizing your influencers, you will often receive some mutual respect and a chance to add another subscriber and convert them to a brand ambassador.
a special note on advocates Sometimes your best influencers and advocates are right under your nose: your customers and your employees. Identify who enjoys sharing information and empower them to begin sharing your message. In early 2013, Cision formalized this process through a great tool called GaggleAMP. GaggleAMP allowed us to invite our advocates to join a gaggle where they could easily share messages on our behalf on their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages. We could share blog posts, news and interesting content from others in our industry more quickly with our community and give them a one-click solution to helping us spread the word. Not only did this help grow Cisions community (and drive over 10K clicks to our content), but it helped those advocates grow their own spheres of influence in their communities.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
34
What About Social?
using social for content ideas

Creating enough content is a challenge that most content marketers face. It is important to engage on social networks, but its just as important to listen. As mentioned in the Creating and Curating Valuable Content section, by monitoring what people are discussing on social media, you can often get great ideas for your next blog post or YouTube video. Look for common questions that customers in your industry are asking and create your next blog post addressing these issues. That way, the next time you see someone mention that topic, you can link them to your content which directly relates to what they are talking about. It can be seen as proactive customer service, yet you are offering useful content at the same time.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
35
What About Social?
You can also drum up a blog post recapping the best news stories from your industry for that week or comprise a list of the best industry specific blogs based on what your audience has been discussing. These posts often dont require a lot of time but still offer extremely useful content and have great sharing potential. Mark Schaefer mentions the importance of getting involved on LinkedIn forums and describes it as a goldmine of opportunity to create micro-content. Subscribe to groups specific to your industry on LinkedIn, and peruse the forums to get involved in the conversation. Schaefer explains that simply answering questions is providing meaningful content that can attract attention to you and your website. If there is a question or discussion that you think could warrant a blog post, make that a topic for the week.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
36
CISION BLOG
Cision Blog
cision blog: a case study in the evolution of content marketing
in the beginning...
When Cision Blog first launched in October 2008, founding bloggers Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall felt like they were writing into a void, pushing content into the blogosphere, unsure if anyone was listening. And they needed people to listen. Cision Blogs main goal was (and still is) to raise awareness of Cision and build brand loyalty by sharing expertise in our industry. The blogs tagline expresses the commitment to that goal: insights to help communicators navigate the evolving media landscape. What Heidi and Jay quickly realized at the time was the power of social karma in building a community around the blog: sharing others content, commenting on other blogs and building relationships with influencers brought a community to Cision Blog that increased traffic, retweets, inbound links and comments, much like the strategies you read about in the chapter What about social? (We eventually got smarter about this by using GaggleAMP and involving even more internal advocates, which you can read about in the previous chapter as well.) PR and social media expert Shonali Burke, president of Shonali Burke Consulting and founding blogger of Waxing UnLyrical watched Cision closely at the time: Now that weve been in the social sphere for some years, its interesting to see how far weve come. I remember, back in 2008, meeting Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall in Detroit (which is where the PRSA International Conference was held that year) for the first time. Cision was always a big player in the media research, monitoring and database world, but I remember how much of a community they had already started building online. That year, they did a presentation with Jason Falls (who Id also met for the first time) and I remember thinking, These people know what theyre talking about. They were the early adopters for our field; some competitive firms, some of which are doing very well today, werent even on social media platforms back then. In fact, I remember doing some benchmarking research at the time, and Cision stood out as the leader of the pack. They were clearly the one to watch. And yes, this was when I had no business relationship with them!
What I think theyve done so well is participate and pay forward; they understand what it is to build community, both online and offline.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
38
Cision Blog
When I had no standing whatsoever in the social media sphere (to the extent I have any now, but I wont play the false humility card), people like Heidi and Jay were friendly and collegial. It wasnt that we suddenly became the best of friends or anything; but there was a willingness to share information, to help out, that made a huge difference to all of us who were trying to figure this new world out. Cision Blog was one of the earliest of its kind, as were its social channels and activities on those channels. Over the years, what impressed me was the way Cision kept this up. My guess is theyve had peaks and valleys; which firm doesnt? But theyve made a concerted effort to build and maintain relationships, and that means a lot. Their community managers regularly comment on other blogs, they regularly engage on Twitter and other social networks, and they actually reply to emails (what a shocker!). Ive even had Cision staff willingly guest post for me on my blog, even though its not a huge, money-making, A-list blog. Over time, all this adds up; because when you are asked for your expert opinion on competitive services, who are you more likely to refer to? Yes, thats a rhetorical question. And I have to say that in all our various conversations over the years, never once did Cision offer any kind of quid pro quo.
continued growth through content

As the blog continued to grow, the bloggers found that the more content they posted, the more people came to the blog. We had reached a new place in the evolution of the blog, Heidi said. We finally understood that to continue to build our community we needed to continue to increase our quality content, but we were short on the time to produce it all. It was a different challenge than having a lot to say but not knowing if there was anyone to hear it. Over the next few years, Cision added six additional bloggers to Cision Blog, in addition to numerous guest posts, interviews and features, all which helped build their community and increase traffic as outlined in the previous chapter, Curating and creating great content. Regular features and different types of content came with the new voices writing for the blog as well. Our site visits have increased by 95percent since launching our weekly Fashion and Beauty
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
39
Cision Blog
feature and PR & Marketing Wins, Moves & Other News, said Lisa Larranaga Denten, social media manager at Cision. In addition, were able to put the spotlight on bloggers and PR pros we interview and it strengthens our relationship with the community. Jay Baer, marketing strategist, speaker, author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype and The NOW Revolution, and author and president of the social media and content marketing consultancy Convince & Convert explains how the volume of content you produce has a direct impact on your business success:
Its not so much about content frequency, but rather about content volume. The number of questions and information needs possessed by your prospective customers (and even current customers) are far more numerous than is commonly believed.
For argument, lets say you have five customer types (personas). Lets further assume that you have defined your sales funnel into five steps (pretty common). For each of those audience types, and for each of those steps, what questions must be satisfactorily answered for the prospect to move to the next stage? Conservatively, lets assume its four key questions per step. So, that would be:
5x5x4
audiences
= 100
steps
questions
pieces of content, minimum. And the overwhelming best practice is to answer each question in multiple formats. If you think you have enough content, you almost assuredly do not.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
40
Cision Blog
paid amplification
Flash forward to today and a little more than four years after Cision Blog launched: the bloggers are consistently producing content nearly every weekday and engaging on social sites with the community. As the growth of community for the blog stabilizes, the bloggers are faced with a new challenge: How do we get our community to the next level? Like Daniel Durazo of Allianz Global Assistance, Cisions bloggers had been reading a lot about content marketing, native advertising and branded content, but werent sure where to start. Jeremiah Owyang and Rebecca Liebs research report, The Converged Media Imperative for Altimeter Group outlines a new unification of paid, earned and owned media:
Cision blog already focused on quite a few aspects of this cycle including:
Content Strategy Publication Across Channels (like on social sites and linked on Cisions homepage) Engagement Periodic Reporting Real-Time Measurement
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
41
Cision Blog
But what about Amplification? This was adding the paid aspect to the earned, shared and owned media that the Cision bloggers were managing, to have a truly converged workflow, and seemed to be the missing link for growing the community that read Cision Blog. Cision began using paid amplification to place links to their blog posts on premium publisher sites like Time, PC World and Bloomberg Businessweek. Cisions partners had developed an algorithm that predicts what stories a reader is most interested in and places links to those stories on articles that those readers are viewing. (More on this concept in the following chapter, Amp it up!)
In the first four months of using paid amplification on premium publisher sites, Cision was driving tens of thousands of new visitors to the blog and had doubled the traffic to the site. Paid amplification wouldnt have worked without the great content the blogging team was producing, but it was just the fuel to throw on the fire to bring Cision Blog to the next level.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
42
AMP IT UP!
Amp it Up!
amp it up! amplifying your content across the web

If the news is that important, it will find me.
A college student in an article by Brian Stelter in the New York Times, March 2008
Youve just read about the Converged Media Imperitive from Alitmeter Group. Paid and earned media are becoming one But, as PR pros and marketers, how do we fit into the Paid media landscape? Essentially, there has been a huge uptick in advertising content, and as content experts, it is necessary for us to figure out how this works.
The terms can get a bit confusing, so first, a quick glossary on the terms that youll hear when thinking about paid amplification:
Amplification: Merriam-Webster says that to amplify is to to increase the strength or amount of; especially: to make louder. In content marketing terms, amplification refers to tactics that help our content reach the audiences we are targeting. One form of this is native advertising. Native Advertising: A method of advertising that is typically less intrusive than traditional advertising, where the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing valuable content in the context of the users experience. Remember old school advertorials in magazines? This is a similar concept on the Web. Branded Content Branded content is quite simply, content produced by a brand that is placed in a traditional news medium.
All of these terms are closely related, but it is important to understand them as you dive into content marketing.
The key to native advertising is that it fits seamlessly within a users experience that the consumer doesnt feel like they are being advertised to. There are two parts to accomplishing this:
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
44
Amp it Up!
The quality of the content. Self-promotional content tends not to be received as well in a native advertising format. Telling a story and highlighting something interesting, entertaining, unique or news-worthy will make your content a good fit for native advertising. The way that the content is presented. Unlike traditional advertorials, native advertising can be specifically targeted to consumers interested in reading your content. In the Cision Blog case study, we discussed using paid amplification on a premium publisher network. In this case, links to Cision Blog articles appear as content that is recommended for you. Promoted tweets on Twitter are frequently attached to certain keyword or hashtag searches. Sponsored stories on Facebook are in the news feeds of friends who have interacted with the brand sponsoring the story. YouTubes in-stream advertising is frequently search-term based. Basically, you only see native ads that you have expressed an interest in based on your browsing history, what you are searching for and the connections youve made on social sites.
why do you need amplification?

Essentially, traditional PR and marketing tactics are no longer enough. News is customizable and aggregated; i.e. we are experiencing the end of news as an event: we dont always sit down to watch the 9 oclock news or pick up a print newspaper to know what is going on that day; we have alerts set up and delivered to our smart phones, articles shared through social sites and real-time news round-ups from sources we trust. As consumers, we now think the news will find us. As PR pros & marketers, we need to ensure our content is being delivered to our target audiences where they are; instead of hoping they will come to us. Peter Himler, founding principal at Flatiron Communications, contributing writer for Forbes.com and president of the Publicity Club of New York describes how the evolution of native advertising for PR has been fueled by the new ways consumers digest content:
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
45
Amp it Up!
Given the reality of how consumers today derive their news and information, i.e., from a large, splintered and ephemeral media ecosystem, communications professionals must look beyond the editorial placement for building a positive, branded digital media footprint for their clients. This includes owned and (God forbid) paid media schemes, as well as hybrids of the two, which include native advertising/ sponsored content and contributed (by-lined) articles and op-eds.
4 benefits to amplification
Amplification allows you to promote your content on channels where your audience is already engaged. Here are the benefits to paid amplification:
1. grow your audience:

Once youve created your story, you need to share it. Promote your article using paid amplification to publisher news websites and social sites to find your audiences where they hang out.
2. target the right people:

In native advertising, your stories appear as suggested content in the sections of online news sites that your potential customers are reading most and your social posts appear when people are searching keywords or when their friends are already engaged with your brand.
3. build high-quality traffic:

Drive readers directly to your newsroom, blog, website or stories written about your brand. Engage with new audiences who are interested in your branded content. Your best content will be showcased more frequently to readers, helping drive high-quality engagement.
4. acquire more customers:

Use your content to get potential customers thinking about your brand as a resource of valuable information. Youll build a relationship with them before the end of the buying cycle so youll be front of mind when theyre ready to make a purchase.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
46
Amp it Up!
examples of amplified content

You may be asking how this actually looks put into practice. Here are a few examples of amplified content in action:
In this article from Time.com, the stories that are appearing as You Might Also Like, From Around the Web and Recommend for You are all paid amplifications of earned or owned media stories, placed on an article. An algorithm looks at the readers history, what articles they are reading and what people who are similar to them have clicked on in the past to determine which paid stories to place on the article they are reading.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
47
Amp it Up!
When Heidi Sullivan logged into Facebook in the screenshot above, the top post was related to her friends William and Catherine liking Fab.com, accompanied by a fun video from Fab.com. You can see the small sponsored tag to the bottom right of the video, indicating that Fab.com paid to have this placement appear in a prominent place in Heidis news feed.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
48
Amp it Up!
In this screenshot of Twitter, when you search remove grass stains the top tweet you find is from Wisk Deep Clean, including a coupon, to help you get your shirt clean.
This YouTube search for Superman includes top videos like What if Superman Punched You and the official trailer for the movie from Warner Brothers, but, at the top, includes two native ads from Gillete (Man Of Steel Shaving He Can Do It All) and LEGO (LEGO Man of Steel). Whats great about these two native ads is that they are entertaining and compelling content that raise awareness of both brands, while still providing interesting and relevant content.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
49
Amp it Up!
This article on crowdfunding from Forbes is actually part of a branded content series from FedEx called FedEx Voice and articles are all about small business. FedEx gains visibility with Forbes audience while still providing valuable content.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
50
Amp it Up!
a/b testing
As you can see from the previous examples, there are myriad ways to amplify your content. But what works best for you? Sometimes its hard to know until you try. Digital marketers have been using A/B testing for years. Essentially, it just involves trying similar things in two different ways to see which one is more effective. For example:
Amplify a story on publisher sites using one headline, then try another, and see which one generates more clicks Promote a tweet using one search term or hashtag, then try the other Write a piece of branded content for a news website and then promote a few Facebook posts from your brand page to discover which gives you a better return on your investment Remember the converged media chart from Altimeter group in the Cision Blog case study? This testing is all part of RealTime Measurement & Iteration. If we are constantly looking to determine which content is the most effective with our target audience, our native advertising will be even more fruitful. Getting started in social amplification doesnt have to use your whole budget. You can start out by taking a popular Facebook post and promoting it for $50 over a week. Of course, the more money you spend, the greater return you will see in your investment, but its a good way to see whats working as you get started. So dont be nervous create your strategy, build your content and start amplifying!
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
51
ANALYZING & MEASURING YOUR CONTENT MARKETING EFFORTS
analyzing & measuring your content marketing efforts

Now that you have published and amplified your content across owned, earned and paid media channels, you may feel that your job is complete; however, it is just the beginning. For example, if you purchased a bottle of weight loss pills that promised you would lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks, you wouldnt assume two weeks later that you lost the weight after taking them. You would hop on the scale before you took the pills and then two weeks later to make sure the product fulfilled its promise. This same mentality needs to be applied to any of your marketing efforts; you must first establish a benchmark of your current progress and then measure at predetermined intervals as you continue on your marketing efforts to gauge their success.
creating goals
In order to understand how you can start measuring this success lets start by looking at the definition of content marketing, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute. A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Based on this definition your content has four separate ways to interact with your audience:
1. Attracting current and new members 2. Acquiring the audiences information and attention 3. Engaging with your audiences questions or comments 4. Driving their profitable actions through your sales force or website
In order to understand these four interactions you will need to create goals for each. When creating goals you will want to follow some specific steps such as the SMART methodology . SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Relevant and Time-Bound. By following this process for creating goals, your goals will remain accurate while balancing expectations and workload.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
53
Specific: You will want to ensure that goals are clearly defined so you will know what to measure. For example, if your goal was to increase your brands awareness this would be WAY too general to accurately measure. However, if your goal was to increase your brands websites awareness across Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin; you now have a specific product and channels that you would need to focus on. Measureable: If you were asked what is the temperature outside? in the United States you would probably respond back that its 75 degrees Fahrenheit but if you were in Europe you may respond back that its about 24 degrees Celsius. In order to make goals measurable you will need to determine what metrics you will want to track before embarking on any marketing efforts. This way you know what you will want to keep an eye on and will ensure uniform results. For the goal of increasing your websites awareness across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you would want to measure the referral traffic coming from those specific channels on your website. Achievable: For your goals to be achievable they must be realistic but attainable. This means they must not be too easy that it will take minimum effort but not too lofty where you will never reach them. To ensure your goals are attainable look at your resources, budget, talent and previous benchmarks to determine what can be accomplished. For the goal you would aim to double your websites referral traffic from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in order to show an increase in your brands awareness. (?) Relevant: Making sure your goals are relevant ensures they are in line with your overall business objectives. If you are a B2B business that sells paper, it would be disingenuous for your overall goals to just create posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts about celebrity gossip. While this may increase the overall growth of your accounts, it will not be the client base that is necessarily making the buying decisions on your industry products. Time-Bound: All goals should have a time frame associated with them so you are held accountable while still showing progression of your goal. For the example you would aim to double your websites referral traffic from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn by the end of the year in order to show an increase in your brands awareness. (?)
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
54
As you can see from the above example, by following the methodology you are able to go from a very general goal to something that can be accurately and easily followed to completion.
what is the value of a page view?

As you continue to produce content for your marketing efforts, you should notice an increase of traffic to your websites, landing pages or newsrooms (if not, you should reexamine your goals and content.) While having an increase in traffic is always a good sign,
page views dont pay the bills

(unless youre a publisher) so you will need to examine the value each page view provides. To start tackling this issue you must start at the end of your sales process or end goals. You can start to understand the value of your content by looking at its ability to direct visitors to a specific action that leads to buying decisions. These buying decisions can easily be tracked when a user clicks on the call to action button when they visit your website. These actions range from hard ROI metrics such as the Check Out buttons you will see across many e-commerce sites, to sign ups for demo options you will see across B2B sites, and finally to soft metrics that include subscribing to your content via an RSS feed or a social network. Its nice and easy determining how many call to actions were taken on your website by defining these actions as a goal, using site analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Webtrends. These tools will automatically total how many users clicked on those specific actions and can even show you how users came to click on that option. By clearly identifying these actions and understanding how much revenue is associated with each action you can begin the process of understanding the value of a page view. Once you have decided on your goals for your website the next step would be to determine how many individuals clicked on those goals and where those clicks came from. For example, if you generated $100 in revenue by 10 clicks on your websites call to action over the past 30 days, you can deduce that each click is worth $10 . Once you have determined the amount generated
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
55
for each click you must determine where those clicks came from using the referral traffic. Referral traffic is an online metric that allows you to understand where your visitors came from when they arrive on a particular page or select a particular action. Using your site analytics you can segment out the referral traffic so you could see where the 10 clicks came from in the above example and what pages were viewed. Using your site analytics you can see that four of those clicks came from direct traffic, three came from twitter and the remaining three came from your companys blog. Now by looking at this referral traffic you can see that $40 came from your actions on Twitter and $30 came from your company blog. This is a basic example and tracking the path of a visitor may be difficult and complex in reality, but this example can get you thinking about ways that you can start tangibly tracking your content marketing efforts through to conversion or action. Understanding the path visitors take on your website on the way to a purchase is essential for any marketers content effort in order to understand which content has done the best and which content still needs work.
What are the profitable actions on your website for Lead Generation?
As Jay Baer pointed out,
content cannot be measured with a single metric

because no one data point can successfully or satisfactorily tell you whether your program is working. Instead, you need to create an array of metrics that are selected from four primary buckets.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
56
Moz breaks these metrics down into four separate buckets.
1. consumption metrics:
How many eyeballs page did your content receive? This is the most basic metric to start measuring your content marketing efforts, since your content will not be successful if no one is looking at it. Typically, most marketers are already looking at these impressions but they cant stop there. (ex. Page views, new visitors, unique visitors)
2. share metrics:
How many times was your content shared across a social network? This is the next step in understanding the value of a page view since social shares will demonstrate the benefit your content provides. If your content is being shared that means someone finds it valuable enough to share it with their own social networks. (ex. Tweets/Re-tweets, Facebook Likes/ shares, Pins, etc.)
3. lead generation metrics:

how many visitors are signing up to learn more about your products or services? With these metrics you are able to start pulling your page views into your sales funnel as inbound leads. Agencies and brands can track this by including a referral link within their Cision Social Newsroom in order to see how many leads come from their content! (Webinar leads, product trials, email subscribers, etc.)
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
57
4. sales metrics:
How many of those content marketing leads convert into sales? Each lead your content provides is only valuable if it closes. So look at not only which content provided the most leads but which content provided the most converted leads! Following these steps you can provide a hard ROI on all of your efforts. As you may have noticed, these metrics line up with the Content Marketing Institutes definition of content marketing and can be used to measure your results.
bringing it all together

The most important factor in measuring the success of your content marketing campaigns is having measurable goals.. But dont forget this is a process that you will have to test over time, so if you dont triple your followers or generate millions in sales overnight, dont be frustrated. Test, measure and try again, until you find the content creation and amplification process that is most effective for your brand.
in summary
PR and marketing are evolving rapidly, and creating and amplifying content is at the center of the evolution. You dont want to be left behind, assuming that content marketing is simply a nice-to-have; it is an imperative for the future of our industry. As PR professionals and marketers, we own our brands stories. Now we have more tools to share those stories with the world. For more resources, information and tools, visit http://us.cision. com/content-marketing.
866.639.5087 877.269.3367
58

Cision 2013 Ebook ContentMarketingforPR

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cision 2013 Ebook ContentMarketingforPR

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

POWER YOUR STORY

Content Marketing Essentials for PR

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

Creating & Curating Valuable Content Know your audience

Optimizing Your Content

What About Social?

Analyzing and Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

taking your content to the next level

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

what is content marketing?

of Americans look at product reviews before purchasing.

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

creation, curation, optimization, amplification and analysis.

of B2B marketers outsource their content creation.

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

What is Content Marketing?

CREATING & CURATING VALUABLE CONTENT

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

creating & curating valuable content: know your audience

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

what type of content does your audience like to consume?

want to know whos downloading your white papers or tip sheets?

want to know who your blog audience is?

want to know what stories to cover next?

deliver real value

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

Your content must be a lot of things at once:

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

A few types of content marketing include:

brick vs. feather content

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

conquering writers block

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

on Facebook, the average user posts 90 items of content each month.

Copyright Cision, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6/13

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

Copyright Cision, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6/13

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Creating & Curating Valuable Content

OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR

Optimizing Your Content

optimizing your content

search engine optimization

POWER YOUR STORY: Content Marketing Essentials for PR