SMX Liveblog: Executing A Flawless Content Marketing Strategy

Lunch is over and hopefully everyone is recharged.  This session will focus on how to get the most out of your content strategy.  This particular topic is something I’ve recently been working on with my own clients so I can’t wait to hear what tips these speakers will offer. The speakers for this session include:

• Chris Bennett, CEO & Founder, 97th Floor (@chrisbennett)
• David Roth, VP Marketing, Realtor.com (@daverothsays)
• Purna Virji, Director of Communications, Petplan Pet Insurance (@purnavirji)

Chris Bennett: ‘Get your MacGyver on!’

Chris wants to talk about getting mileage out of your content so you can stop working so hard. Stop spreading yourself too thin and stop wearing too many hats. Stop with the checklist marketing mentality.

You can stop this madness by repurposing your content in different areas for different uses.  Take a piece of content (video, infographic, image etc.) and “get your MacGyver on!”

Examples of How to Repurpose Content

• Take an infographic and put it on Slideshare. 97^th floor has seen better user engagement when infographics are actually split into several slides.
• Take a Slideshare and turn it into a mini graphic/image rich article. Your graphic can then link back to your site where a full blog post or article can then be browsed by the user.
• Spice up your rich articles with GIF’s just to add a little extra zing to it.

The basic idea is to not reinvent the wheel. Leverage what you have by spreading the love. This means you can have videos living in several areas including your own site. Consider changing the videos just slightly so that each platform has something different from the others – long form vs. short form, gifs, etc.

Short videos are working well on social and on mobile – people don’t mind being interrupted for a few seconds because they aren’t investing too much of their time.

Make sure your content has Open Graph, Twitter Cards and rich snippets. These types of posts, search results, etc. are just different enough that they easily capture the attention of users. There are so very few brands actually taking advantage of these markups yet they give great results. Go ahead, don’t be afraid to try something new and take that content to the next level on social platforms. Pinterest has the Rich Pins too, that markup products, recipes, location and more.

Interactive marketing apps are part of the future of content marketing. HTML5 JS mobile friendly apps is what Chris is talking about.  Really cool apps can be created and become wildly successful out on the web, even for boring topics like taxes like CPA Select did for tax codes. 97^th floor has seen that when users use these apps you are then able to have really strong CTAs to convert that traffic.

Chris’ slides:

Purna Virji: Trends Matter

How to give your existing content wings. Since Purna works in the pet industry, her whole deck is set to animals … aww.

Part 1: How do you find media worth content that exists?

You want to build brand authority, awareness, high quality links , good will and more coverage in the SERPs right?  Here are 3 ideas that will help.

• Pitch in time for “national ____ day”. Do you have existing content that is relevant? Can you make it new and improved?
• Lesser-known facts or answers to FAQs. Come up with an idea that may group existing content together in one area like common poisons for pets. They links to old content they previously posted.
• Seasonal, timely content. Think of the season like summer or bridal season. What content do you have that is relevant to the current or upcoming season and respin it.
• BONUS: These sites give you ideas of what’s trending so you can possibly piggy-back on what’s popular:
  • WhatsTrending.com
  • Google Trends

Part 2: Pitching your content

When it comes to getting content published, it’s smart to use social media tools available to you. Find relevant audience members and target ads to them a week or two before you are thinking of pitching content to them. The idea is to be Top of Mind when you go to companies to pitch your idea.

Part 3: Getting conversions from your pitch

Personalize your pitch to companies, emphasize the value your adding but keep it short and sweet. Build and nurture the relationship with your contact person and make sure to allow for a lot of lead time in order to close the deal and iron out the kinks. Once you have closed the deal, don’t stop nurturing there. Send a thank you note to your contact. Be available to return the favor. In the future give these contacts perks like “first look” on future content.

I loved her deck! So many cute animal pictures include dog and cat yoga poses.

David Roth: Content is Currency

David’s presentation is going to be a case study to a strategy they used at Realtor.com.

“Content is the currency with which we tell our story to our audience. Content for the sake of content is inherently worthless.” Good marketing is about storytelling so what’s your story? Who are you telling it to? Why do they care and what kind of content will best tell that story?

Creating, Pitching, Testing and measuring content marketing.  This is the cycle that Realtor.com uses when doing their celebrity real estate content. Realtor.com is able to take their new listings and cross reference public records with a celebrity database to find candidate listings that would work in this particular strategy. Once they find a listing or two they then create content around it whether it’s features of the property a known celebrity is selling or the price its being sold for etc. Different properties present opportunities that appeal to different audiences include fans, enthusiasts of various passions, sports fanatics and more.  They’ve come up with a content strategy that will constantly give them a new audience to present brand awareness to. Genius!

Going to the next step after you have your content, it’s time to take it to social.  Realtor.com writes copy for the social networks, makes their images social ready, generate pictures and videos for instagram or collages and pin maps for Pinterest. They use relevant hashtags for the celebrities too in order to capture more audience.

Aside from social they also utilize other marketing areas with this content. Ways that Realtor.com does this are things like:

• Best of blog lists in an email
• Content syndication
• SEO-friendly blogs
• Social outreach
• Buying relevant keywords
• YouTube

How do you know when you’ve won with your strategy? When things like other authority sites reach out to you or you get great referral traffic and SEO benefits out of the content. Your analytics will help you measure that success with the proper tagging/filtering and tracking. Baseline your traffic at the beginning and track it throughout the process. Watch for spikes and quantify lift while measuring ROI.

Above all else, remember that Authority and Authenticity matters! Don’t compromise those as your create and roll out your content strategy.

David’s slides:

Once a hard working corporate type, Jayme traded in her office and business attire for cowboy boots and the Sierra Nevada mountains. At one time Jayme was the director of SEO for Bruce Clay Inc., then senior SEO analyst for WebMetro. She now spends her time out in the country. As a busy mom, soccer coach, weekly volleyball player, weekend hiker and hobbyist photographer she does manage to find a few hours a week to stay connected to the Internet Marketing world plus she is still doing SEO on a handful of clients. You won't find her active on Twitter or her own blog, because when she does have spare time she's usually away from her computer enjoying what life has to offer, away from the computer monitor. In fact her own website is sinfully neglected. Even though she has grand plans to one day put some energy into her own blog that day still hasn't arrived, possibly after her kids are both in school.

See Jayme's author page for links to connect on social media.