Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5 6
Anyone, anywhere, with any
budget can develop a valuable
audience over time and make an
impact. In other words, there are no
excuses for not doing this well, as
long as you have a plan and execute
against that plan.
JOE PULIZZI
Founder of Content Marketing Institute
DEVELOP YOUR STRATEGY &
CREATE A MISSION STATEMENT
5
DEVELOP YOUR STRATEGY & CREATE A MISSION STATEMENT
GOAL TRACK
ENGAGEMENT
• Leads (organics vs. paid) • Form Fills
Nurture prospects until they’re
• MQLs/Sales • Revenue
ready to make a purchase
Accepted/Opportunities (SAO) • Returning Visitors
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) • Close rate
• Cost per lead • Retention rate and/or
• Qualified lead velocity rate (i.e., customer lifetime value
growth in qualified leads) and/or upsell/cross-sell
6
DEVELOP YOUR STRATEGY &
CREATE A MISSION STATEMENT
AUDIENCE X finds …
INFORMATION Y for …
BENEFIT Z
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1 2
IDENTIFY
YOUR BUYERS
5 6
Content that understands
its audience will be good
content. Content that
doesn’t, can’t be.
DOUG KESSLER
Creative Director & Co-Founder
Velocity Partners Ltd
IDENTIFY YOUR BUYERS
To really identify your buyers, you’ll
need to map out the stakeholders.
Consider:
PRO TIP
What motivates each member?
PRO TIP
Asking the sales team who their prospects
and customers are
Stick to the info that will shape
Using LinkedIn to explore roles and hierarchy your content. You don’t need
within an ideal company to know what car your persona
drives, how many kids they
Asking existing customers directly through
have, or whether they’re
surveys and email
dog or cat people.
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1 2
3 IDENTIFY
TOPICS
4
5 6
Start by thinking like the
target audience. Quantify their
questions to understand the
categories and structure of the
content that gets ranked and
shared. Then build a content
marketing destination best
structured to answer
those questions.
MICHAEL BRENNER
CEO, Marketing Insider Group
When choosing topics,
Topics to consider:
14
IDENTIFY TOPICS
Get Answers
15
1 2
CREATE
CONTENT 5 6
CREATE CONTENT
Create an Editorial Calendar
17
CREATE CONTENT
The Blogging Food Groups
Vegetables
Good-for-you posts that highlight thought leadership
Grains
Filling how-to and influencer posts
Spices
Bold statements to spice up the conversation
Desserts
Light-hearted content that’s eminently sharable
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CREATE CONTENT
Big Rock Content
The Big Rock model is one easy way to fill out an editorial
calendar. A Big Rock is an SEO-friendly, conversation-
owning piece of content with endless repurposing
opportunities across the blogging food groups.
4
AMPLIFY YOUR CONTENT
5 6
AMPLIFY YOUR CONTENT
Promote your content, both organically
and with paid promotion, such as:
• SEO
• Influencer promotion
• Employee promotion
• Targeted content
• Native ads
21
AMPLIFY YOUR CONTENT
SEO
your content
22
AMPLIFY YOUR CONTENT
Influencer & Employee Promotion PRO TIP
24
PRO TIP
Targeted content
When you publish on LinkedIn, you can select a targeted
audience for each post. This free feature lets you focus your
content for each of your audience segments.
Native ads
Native ads are a paid solution that places your content in
the context of what your audience is already consuming.
Relevant, highly-targeted content performs well in native
ads, because it feels like a natural extension of the
reader’s feed.
1 2
ANALYZE AND
4
OPTIMIZE
5 6
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ANALYZE AND OPTIMIZE
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CONCLUSION
Content marketing is more than
just content. It is content
strategically created to address
buyers’ needs while serving a
measurable business objective.
By practicing these six steps, you
can start turning random acts of
content into intentional, results-
driven content marketing.
For more in-depth tips, strategy, and advice,
download The Sophisticated Marketer’s
Guide to Content Marketing.
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Today, LinkedIn has more than 433 million professionals in its network.
That’s more than two-thirds of the 600 million professionals on the
planet, representing the largest group anywhere of influential, affluent,
and educated people.