Excellent book on how to do content marketing. Seems more oriented to larger companies but also useful for small business.
“Your content marketing strategy must come before your social media strategy.”
The author offers principles and rules, examples, and specific actions.
Some examples of his advice follows.
The six principles of epic content marketing
1. Fill a need
2. Be consistent (deliver content on time as expected)
3. Be human
4. Have a point of view (take sides, take a stand)
5. Avoid “sales speak”
6. Be best of breed
Spend 20 -30 minutes talking in-depth, unscripted, with customers about why they bought or did not buy or bought from a competitor.
Priority initiatives - What 3 -5 problems do they dedicate time and budget to solve.
Success factors – What metrics or rewards does the buyer associate with success
Perceived barriers – What factors cause the buyer to hesitate to buy from you
Buying process – What process does the buyer use to explore and select a solution
Decision criteria – What aspects of the product will the buyer assess in evaluating alternatives (should include insights from buyers who chose a competitor and buyers who decided not to buy at all)
Define your engagement cycle which is your sales process aligned with the customer's buying cycle.
The sales process might be a sales funnel e.g. lead, prospect, qualified, customer, repeat customer or in a retail store it might be visitor, browser, shopper, buyer.
Develop a content segmentation grid with Persona as rows and stage of the process as columns. Put your content titles in each cell and look for gaps. You want to have the right content for each stage of the process.
Define your content niche. Be as narrow or focused as possible. “On what topic can you be the leading informational expert in the world that truly matters to your customers and your business?”
Advice about Blogging
Encourage conversations
Participate in other blogs
Do you understand the key informational needs of your audience, their pain points?
Are you hanging out online where your customers are?
Can you commit to blogging at least two times per week?
How will you integrate the blog with the rest or your marketing?
Use killer headlines (title should include keywords, numbers, problems, be very specific e.g. “10 Ways to Make More Money with Small-Cap Stocks”)
Focus on the problem
Less is more, keep it short
Keep sentences short
Use bullets
Short paragraphs
Get rid of unnecessary words
Edit, edit, edit
Think first about the call to action
Think “content packages” e.g. plan ahead how you will package blog posts into an e-book
Pursue guest blogging
Promote key influences with lists
Measure, measure, measure e.g. visits and unique visitors, pageviews, time on site. Signups for your newsletter., search rankings, inbound links to your blog
Do an influencer question and answer session
Outsource