15 Lessons From Top Content

Marketers

A collection of content marketing advice from experts

in Scripted’s Content Influencer series.
 The Current State of Content
Content marketing is one of the most popular marketing buzzwords in marketing,
but it s more than a fad or trend — it s a necessary strategy for any business at
any stage. In a recent report in 2015, 86 percent of B2B companies use content
marketing, yet only 38 percent believe they are effective at it.

70% of marketers are creating

more content

Content marketing takes more than just creating great content. At the beginning,
you must focus on your strategy, editorial calendar, and audience. After a plan is
established comes the challenge of creating engaging content and distributing it
across your channels. Lastly, marketers must understand how their content
performs and iterate their strategy based on results.

At Scripted, we believe at the core of any marketing strategy is relevant and

quality content which is why we ve spent two years interviewing content
marketing influencers about how they re using content to achieve their marketing
goals.
 The Content Creation Cycle
Original content can help brands improve their credibility, raise awareness, create
trust with customers, drive traffic, and ultimately generate high-quality leads.

Typically we see companies following the process below in content marketing. It s a

cycle compiled of key components that help support each segment of content
marketing. For teams with limited resources, companies have been created to
support each segment ”we ve listed some of our favorite below).
In this guide, we ve curated the most valuable secrets from a select group of
marketers — including CMI s Joe Pulizzi and Lee Odden — about how to exceed at
each stage of the content creation process. Enjoy!

Planning
• Digital agency, SEO agency
• Focus on audience, editorial planning

Planning
Measuring Content
• Analytics tools Creation/Writing
• Social measuring tools • In-house for company
specific
• Outsource for editorial,
Measuring Creating evergreen content
• Writing services
• Editing

Distribution
• Publish to CMS/Social Channels Distributing
• Resource section/hub
• Work with vendors to promote
across channels
• Content syndication
Part 1: Content Planning
The first step to content marketing is planning a strategy. If you create content
without a plan and goals in mind, your efforts may be unsuccessful. When you
start to plan a content strategy, it s important to think about the goals you want
to achieve.

Establishing content goals will form the foundation for the rest of your
strategy. While these are subject to change in the future, they re useful to
have in the beginning. Here s a short list of questions you can answer to help
you define your goals:

1. What do you want to achieve through your content marketing program

(for example: thought leadership, SEO improvement, lead generation
tools, customer retention)? List as many as you want.
2. How will you be measuring these desired goals? Assign metrics to each
one you listed above.
3. What resources do you need to reach these goals?
4. What types of content are needed to reach these goals (for example:
blog posts, white papers, social media posts, etc.)?
5. How will your content reach a relevant audience?

Here are what some influencers have to say about the content strategy
planning process.
 Canva
We needed content to
educate our audience

Most of our marketing is centered

around education. There are a lot of
people who want to learn graphic design,
and are keen to improve their social
Zach Kitschke
media skills. Sharing tips and tricks that
Head of Communications
are useful to users helps to get Canva
out into the world, but also provides
great value to our users.

“ We also invest a lot of energy into our weekly design tutorials

and blog content. We write about topics that interest our
audience, including social media, marketing and graphic
design.

Content from Canva:

Canva Blog
 Captora
We tie content to business
goals
I like to create a wide funnel to attract
people through thought leadership. By
covering general marketing topics like
content marketing, demand generation, and
inbound marketing, I can help marketers
be better at their job, in hope that they will Dayna Rothman
trust us and eventually become a customer. Former Director of Content
It is also important to map content to your
funnel so that you have content that is
applicable to your customers at each step in
their buying journey.

The E-book Process

When I write eBooks I make them as easy to understand as possible — headings, lists,
bullets — then do multiple rounds of editing. If a subject matter expert is used, I will send
the ebook to them to make sure I have the content right, then send it to design. Then once
it s designed, I review the design, to make sure all the images are right, the design makes
sense and the e-book is templated properly. Lots of review is the key to success.

Content from Captora:

Captora Blog
Captora Content Marketing Resources
42 Floors

On content for lead gen

We have an education center in which
case we get a good chunk of our content
from brokers who voluntarily ask to write
articles to be in the education center. We
give them exposure and linkage, and how
to show their domain expertise in
commercial real estate. It also helps build Bernard Huang,
out content around like, How do you rent Growth Hacker
office space? Should you go with a broker,
should you not go with a broker?

What defines rentable square feet

footage as opposed to available square Content from 42 Floors:
footage? How do you negotiate your Real Estate Education
lease? What things you have to look out 42 Floors Blog
for if you're trying to build out your
space versus getting the landlord to
build it out.

That content is a lot more commercial real estate specific, in which case, we've had
that around for a while. Our current plan is to expand that and make it into an e-
book which we can use it as a lead-generation tactic."
 GeckoBoard
On asking your audience
what content they want
We talk to customers every single day.
We have regular conversations on Skype,
which is a big part of my role. I try to talk to
Sofia Quintero
as many customers as possible to
Growth Firestarter
understand what they like about us, what
they don t like.

“ What are the stories around the product, how we can help them in different ways?
I think it is important to create content and continuously ask yourself: Is this
going to be helpful for anybody, is it going to be insightful, is it going to change
anything?

Content from Geckoboard:

Geckoboard Blog
Geckoboard Resources
Part 2: Content Creation
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to how much content you'll need for a
content marketing strategy. Your publishing frequency will be determined by
your available resources and content goals which will help you understand
how much content you need for your strategy. It s important to have a gauge
on how much content you ll be publishing though because you don t want to
publish content just to create content. A marketer should never sacrifice
quality for quantity.

According to Content Marketing Institute s 2015 Benchmark report, 92

percent of marketers are publishing social media content. The next most
popular types of content are email newsletters, articles on your website and
blog posts.

Many people we interviewed started out with small teams and had to make
do with the resources and people available. Even if that meant just
publishing one piece of quality content a week. Here s what they have to say
about creating, maintaining and defining high-quality content.
 Uberflip
The importance of headlines
We ve recently gotten much more nitpicky. We
took a page out of Upworthy s book. They do this
25 headlines exercise and they brainstorm 25
headlines for every post. So we do the same. We
meet every Friday and throw out ideas for
upcoming posts, webinars and eBooks. The first Hana Abaza
time it took forever. Director of Marketing

Advice for getting started…

“ Number one: Figure out your goal and what you want to try and get out of it. Most
companies know they want to use it as an acquisition channel.

Be realistic. In the first six months of launching you should write the most
amazing content that doesn’t talk a lot about you, but your audience. You re going
to attract visitors and retain them.

Content from Uberflip:

Uberflip Hub
Content Marketing Hub
 Atomic Reach
Turning content into an
engaging experience
For our audience it really is around content
that speaks to them about making their
content creation experience better. We do
a lot of things around how to create better
audience centric content. How to write to the
Ira Haberman
level of sophistication of your audience? How
Former Director of Marketing
do you use emotion when you re writing? The
themes of our thought leadership position on
content marketing, blogging, audience and
content creation all resonate with our
audience.

“ It s great that there s more content, and it s great that the question is around if we
have too much content, instead of do we have enough content? For me, it s about
honing in on the appropriate content for the audience.

Content from Atomic Reach:

Atomic Reach Blog
Atomic Reach Resource Hub
 TopRank Online Marketing
On defining high-quality content

I think high-quality content is content that

satisfies the needs of your reader. It s
thoughtful and relevant. The writing, the design
and usefulness of the content has to inspire
some kind of action. Content that provides an
experience that inspires readers to take action
or think differently is high-quality content.

Lee Odden
SEO has changed quite a bit and that really is CEO
the answer: SEO isn t dead, it s just changing.
Modern SEO is more about optimizing the
discovery, consumption and interaction
between consumers and brand content. That s
Content from TopRank
what my book Optimize is all about. As long as
Online Marketing:
content is displayed in search results AND
TopRank Blog
Google isn t perfect at organizing that content,
SEO will be helpful and useful. SEO that isn t
helpful to the user search experience or the
experience of discovering brand content, isn t
really SEO. It s just crappy spam.
LinkedIn Marketing
Solutions
On quality over quantity

I m in the camp of we don’t need more content

out there, we need more relevant content.
Search engines have killed content farms for a good
reason; they were pumping out bad content that was
created specifically to rank on specific keywords that
their business was interested in. That strategy is no Jason Miller
longer effective and does not make sense anymore. Author & Lead Global Content
While SEO is still important, it is not the number one Marketing

thing your content should be based upon. Instead,

you should be creating content that answers existing
and prospective customer questions and solves their
pain points. The best answer optimized for multiple
channels will be the winner of this game. It s no
longer a game of numbers, but one of relevance.

My strategy hasn t really changed since I started, but it is evolving. It s

moved towards an always on strategy for promoting good content across
multiple channels. I am also focusing more on segmenting audiences and
refining personas to achieve better content relevance.

Content from LinkedIn:

LinkedIn blog
 Andy Smith
Giving your audience content
they want to consume.
Every audience has different goals or different
definitions. It's a danger to try to apply the rules of
one audience against another.

Quality can be one of those things where people

can spend a lot of time delivering too high quality Andy Smith
content to an audience that doesn't go appreciated. Author
Maybe they aren't able to deliver enough content. The Dragonfly Effect

Top 10 lists, generally people

“ You can overemphasize quality, but each

publisher would do well if they try to understand
-- just as they understand what their audiences'
needs are, in terms of problems that they solve -
- what their expectations are for the content
they receive.
Content from Andy Smith:
The Dragonfly Effect
click on them. There's
something in there. I find,
probably, one every couple of
days that I actually bookmark.
The fact that people have this
almost pre-chewed content
out there, that doesn't make it
poor, by definition. It's a
question of how you present it,
and how you blend it.
Part 3: Content Distribution
Once you have a plan about what your content marketing strategy looks
like and the content you need to create, it s time to think about
distribution channels. You can create the most amazing pieces of content
for your audience, but you won t see the benefits if it s not being
distributed through the right channels.

In CMI s benchmark report, B2B marketers cited LinkedIn as their most

popular social media distribution channel. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
and Google+ were also in the top five.

However, content distribution channels can range from social media to

content syndication networks. What we ve learned from our own content
strategy and from the influencers we ve interviewed is that content
promotion is an integral part of any content marketing strategy.
 Outbrain
Why we focused on email distribution
One of the most successful things we ve launched is an email newsletter called
Brainpower. What we re doing is we re actually sharing the results of what s
trending and different aspects of the content marketing industry.

We re not talking about our product, we re not talking about Outbrain or trying to
say, Buy Outbrain, but rather we re sharing really interesting industry trends,
which is very effective. Then there s also the process of curating, of finding great
content that s out there, and directing our consumers to that content.

On trends in content
distribution
One trend is that consumers really are
embracing this notion of discovery at the
bottom of the article. I think the second
major trend, is that a lot of publishers are
Greg Freishtat starting to look at content marketing

SVB Strategic Alliances outside of the historical Outbrain widget, so

folks like Slate.com, they have a really
interesting deployment, it s much more

Content from Outbrain: pervasive than simply at the bottom of the

article.
Outbrain Blog
 Udemy
Why we gate our content
Our blog content is, in essence, lead generation for our paid online courses. We
capture email addresses on the blog and provide opportunities for users to
click over to relevant paid courses.

We look for a three month pay back on our blog content. Basically, three months
after we publish the blog posts we want the leads we capture from our blog posts
to cover the cost of creating the blog posts.

Over the last eight months we ve seen 800 percent traffic growth. It was just a
matter of actually creating high quality content and putting it out there.

On driving ROI
Any content marketing we’re doing drives
sales and drives users. We re taking a very ROI
approach to how we think about our content
development. For instance, we might write a
piece of content about Excel formulas. I want to
give it to people who are searching for How to
use Excel better, but at the same time, we re also Archie Abrams
able to promote our content, our long form
Director of Growth
courses for pay.

Content from Udemy:

Udemy Blog
Creative Market
On guest posting and
including influencers
There s no silver bullet that s going to
start driving traffic to your blog right
away. Start out by building
relationships with other bloggers
and writers in your space. Ask them Zack Onisko
to mention your site or content on their Chief Growth Officer
blog. See what you can do to write on
their blog or ask them to write on your
blog.

Finally, optimize the content in the

body of your post so that when people
read the headline and view the shared On the biggest challenge
image in their feed, they are compelled
I think the challenge is coming up with
to re-share it. Over time, if you are
fresh, new, interesting content. I think at
carefully monitoring your experiments
the volume that we re producing content
and optimizing, you ll see the results of
we ve caught ourselves rehashing old
your hard work and your traffic will
ideas. If we re not writing great content, it s
compound and grow.
not going to get read and it s not going to
be shared.
Content from Creative Market:
Creative Market Blog
Part 4: Measuring Content ROI
Measuring the ROI in content marketing can be one of the biggest
struggles for marketers. In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute s
2015 benchmark report, 84 percent of the marketers surveyed said that
brand awareness is their most important content marketing goal. At the
same time, it can be one of the hardest to measure.

Return on investment measurements show the cost effectiveness of

different marketing strategies. The usual equation is simple: revenue
earned from the investment minus the cost of the investment, divided
by the cost of the investment. However, for many in the content
marketing space, focusing purely on a revenue to blog content ratio isn t
the best way to measure the effectiveness of your content.

In this section, we explore what some influencers in the space had to

say about how they measure content ROI.
 Content Marketing Institute
How we measure content
marketing success
We have a number of objectives and KPIs that
we look at, but our most important metric is the
email subscriber. The goal of our blog is to get
and keep a subscriber. That means we want
current subscribers to stay loyal and new
readers to become subscribers. Once someone
is a subscriber, we work to get them involved in
other types of content we offer (like podcasts,
the magazine, etc.). We ve found that if our Joe Pulizzi
readers consistently engage in three or more Founder
content types that we offer, they are much
more likely to come to our event — Content
Marketing World — where we derive most of
our funds to support our training, research and
other offerings. Content from CMI:
CMI Blog

Turn Followers to Subscribers

Less is more; focus on dominating one channel first before diversifying. Content
marketing strategy; most marketers don t have a documented strategy. This is hard to
believe and is a major problem right now. Moving from social followers to subscribers;
I feel many marketers are wasting money growing their followings on social
without trying to convert those followers into subscribers.
 OKCupid
On measuring brand awareness

Very few people signed up directly from the [OKCupid] blog. It was much more like
a billboard and it just made people think because online dating isn t relevant all the
time for everyone. If you re married or you re dating somebody, you don t need it.
If you read the blog post while you re dating someone and you get dumped, and
you re like, Oh, man. What should I do? Oh yeah, I remember reading that. I think
I ll give it [online dating] a shot.

I think that happened a lot, but very few direct line-ups.

Why Your Brand Voice Matters

People weren t used to seeing a company talk

about their data with that much transparency.
These articles were designed to be funny, viral,
sensational and interesting. And, of course, we were
writing about sex and about attraction. Subjects
that are inherently interesting — people think about
them all the time. Christian Rudder
Content from OKCupid: Co-founder

OKCupid Blog
LearnVest
Why traffic is important to
us
We re looking in much the way that any
publisher is, at total site traffic. We re also
looking at the number of new unique visits that
are coming in. We re looking at time on site.
Carrie Sloan
We re also looking at the social numbers.
Editor-in-Chief

We value storytelling
It s the personal stories of seeing how other people are struggling with money, or
how they re making progress on money. People want to know how other people did
it. The other thing that I can point to is content that let’s you compare and
contrast. For example, we did a story, What s your retirement number?

There s something about seeing those numbers in black & white; and thinking about
your own account balance, that s really engaging for people.

Content from LearnVest:

Learnvest Life & Money Blog
Learnvest Knowledge Center