The Content Cycle.Brighton Digital Marketing Festival 2013.David Somerville, Fresh Egg.
• David Somerville (@southcoastdavid)
• Head of social media at Fresh Egg
• Work with clients such as Confused.com, Maplin, Vodafone Australia, Adecco
• Previously spent over 4 years as online content manager for Friday Media Group
About me
The ‘good old days’ of content.The Content Cycle.
Source: http://glennobrien.com/?p=274
Good old days? BAD old days!
There was a lot of crap out there!
Low-quality websites were hit, especially ‘content farms’
Then this happened...
Source: saffronweb.com
And then this happened…
Source: blog.bringshare.com
Low-quality article marketing and blog spam hit
• Everyone went content crazy (especially SEOs!)
• ‘Content marketing’ became the new buzzphrase
• Content moved more away from automation and only written text
• There was an underlying shift in reason WHY content was written
…and the content landscape changed dramatically
Content now needs to be better and content producers smarter
What is ‘content’?
The Content Cycle.The Content Cycle.
• A process of helping to plan and implement your content strategy
• Makes you focus on objectives and audiences
• Allows you to report fully on your content production and help justify ROI
• Five different related stages…
What is the Content Cycle?
The Content Cycle
An ‘investigation’ stage to ensure you have your content fundamentals in place – guides your content strategy and campaigns
Discovery
Audit your current content (and website) and build a SWOT.
• Technical limitations – crawlable, multi-device accessible
• Content structure – layout for UX, editorial standards, internal linking
• User metrics and conversions – what does the site traffic tell you?
• Resources – who is doing it and who could do it?
• Competitors – what are they doing well and not so well?
Content audit
Producing content for the right audience is crucial, so make sure you know exactly who they are by:
• Using any demographic data you have access to (Hitwise, Mosaic, CRM data, email lists, social media network insights, etc.)
• Building personas for different audience groups
• Including their motivations for wanting to view your content
Audience personas
Social Crawlytics scans your website (or your competitor’s) to show the level of social shares it receives
Use this to see the most popular pages and produce more of this content
Socially popular content – Social Crawlytics
An often overlooked and underused resource…
TIP: this does need to be configured first in Google Analytics
Google Analytics Site Search
Find experts and influencers from within your company (or industry) – use them for ideas and their authority…
Experts and Authorship
Find any offline content and repurpose it digitally
Repurposing content
Source: displaydevelopments.co.uk
Planning & Setup
Use this stage to ensure that your content campaigns are well thought-out and have purpose
It is important to consider what role the content you are writing plays in each stage of the customer journey…
This backs up your ‘audience’ work in the discovery stage
Content and the customer journey
What content channel fits which stage?
Content and the customer journey
Search, social networks, blogs, PR
Your website, blog,
interactive tools
Ecommerce process on site,
Why are you producing this content?
Setting clearly defined OBJECTIVES is vital to the planning and success of a campaign
How are you going to measure the success of this content?
Each content campaign needs to have measureable KPIs to help with reporting – these will help show if you have achieved your OBJECTIVES
Objectives and KPIs
Q&A sites
Keyword suggest
Tools to generate content ideas
News monitoring
Alerts
Tools to generate content ideas
Social tools
Tools to generate content ideas
The tighter, better and more detailed your brief, the better content you will produce (or have produced for you)
Briefs
Use ‘fag packet wireframes’ to help guide designers and content producers about what you want to see
These can also guide the content writer to see how they content will appear in the context of the page
Wireframes
For each campaign, ensure that everyone knows their responsibilities
Responsibilities
Source: fitfanempire.com
The rise of multiple devices means that CONTEXT is key
Different environments
Source: www.mashable.com
Different environments
Execution
The ‘doing’ stage – producing your content and promoting it
Basic content optimisation tips
Content promotion
Content promotion
Influencers…
Influencers vs. brand advocates
Source: hiphopweekly.com
Big hitter, short-term loyalty, questionable motivation
Brand advocates…
Loyal, passionate and long-lasting
Influencers vs. brand advocates
Sources: oprah.com, youtube.com, glamourvanity.com
Influencers vs. brand advocates
Measure Influencer Brand advocates
Consumer trust 18% of people trust influencers
92% of people trust brand advocates
Typical profile Blogger, journalist, pundit/celebrity
Highly satisfied customer
Defined by Size of audience How likely they are to recommend brand
Motivation Grow their audience Help their friends
Advocacy and loyalty Short term Long lasting
Genuine passion Maybe Yes
Incentives needed Typically yes (money, free products, etc.)
Typically no
Make it easy for people to share and it will spread further
Make it shareable
Reporting, Analysis & Insight
This stage is for reporting on what has happened as a result of your content campaigns
A few examples of metrics:
• Links (who is linking to your content)• Reach (eyeballs)• Social reach• Brand mentions and sentiment• Google Analytics metrics (traffic, time on site, etc.)• Conversions and assisted conversions
What metrics can you report on?
Metrics
Visitors, inbound links
Time on page, social shares
Conversions (macro and micro goals)
Link metrics – Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO
Visibility – Searchmetrics, Google Webmaster Tools
Impressions – Google Webmaster tools, tracking pixels
Social reach – Social Crawlytics, Shared Count
Brand or sentiment measurement – Social Mention, Brandwatch
Tools to help measure
Use the Google UTM tag and add this to all links you’re using to promote your content.
• Specify the SOURCE (the place) and the MEDIUM (the method)
• Make sure you keep the CAMPAIGN NAME consistent
• Check the results of the campaign in Google Analytics
Tag your content
Refinement
The final stage – feeding back into Planning & Setup or Execution to help guide future campaigns
• What worked? What didn’t?
• Ask users for feedback on content – what do your social media and onsite comments tell you?
• Did it meet your objectives?
• Combine your metrics with testing and feedback this learning into the planning and setup stage
Refinement
Key takeaways.The Content Cycle.
• Content comes in many forms – think beyond just text (and beyond desktop)
• Focus on your objectives and your audience – why are you producing the content and for who?
• Discover > Plan > Execute > Report > Refine
• RINSE AND REPEAT!
Key takeaways
FreshEgg.com
@southcoastdavid@FreshEgg
Slides available at: FreshEgg.com/Blog
The end