I've recently started defining a Content Marketing Strategy for a high-tech consulting firm and I wanted to share my steps and all the challenges I'm facing. Yes, the work is still under development, so this article might be updated in the future.
What will you find here?
Why do I need a Content Marketing Strategy?
What's Content Marketing?
A 4-steps Content Marketing Strategy - few concepts easy to repeat over a long time (consistency is king IMO)
Tools and hacks to make it happen
1. Why do I need a Content Marketing Strategy?
Ok ok. I'm a Gary Vee's videos avid consumer.
I guess he gave one of the best answers to this question
"If you are not doing this, you are leaving opportunities on the table" - Gary Vee
If you prefer a more Data-Oriented answer, here you go:
26 Statistics explain how Content Marketing is important - by HubSpot 2020
Blogging
Blogs are among the primary three forms of media used in content strategies today. (HubSpot, 2020)
73% of people admit to skimming blog posts while 27% consume them thoroughly. (HubSpot, 2017)
Companies spend 46% of their (Marketing) budget on content creation. (HubSpot, 2017)
Search is the number one traffic source for blogs across all industries. (SEMrush, 2019)
Lists get 2x more shares than other blog post formats. (SEMrush, 2019)
51% of companies say updating old content has proven the most efficient tactic implemented. (SEMrush, 2019)
The majority of companies (67%) use organic traffic to measure their content success. (SEMrush, 2019)
Video
Video has become the most commonly used format in content marketing, overtaking blogs, and infographics. (HubSpot, 2020)
Promotional videos and brand storytelling are the most common video types created by marketers. (HubSpot, 2020)
87% of video marketers say that video has increased traffic to their website. (Wyzowl, 2020)
80% of video marketers claim that video has directly increased sales. (Wyzowl, 2020)
Content Strategy
70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. (HubSpot, 2020)
78% of companies have a team of one-to-three content specialists. (SEMrush, 2019)
Web traffic is among the top two most-common measurements of success for content marketing strategies. (HubSpot, 2020)
The most common measurement of success for content marketing programs is Total Sales. (HubSpot, 2020)
24% of marketers plan on increasing their investment in content marketing in 2020. (HubSpot, 2020)
Nearly 40% of marketers say content marketing is a very important part of their overall marketing strategy. (HubSpot, 2020)
"Content Marketing Strategy" is the most searched query related to content marketing. (SEMrush, 2019)
77% of companies say they have a content marketing strategy. (SEMrush, 2019)
94% of marketers use social media for content distribution. (SEMrush, 2019)
Podcasts
As of 2020, Google’s search algorithms are trying to transcend text to images, voice/ podcasts, and videos. (HubSpot, 2020)
As of April 2020, there are over 30 million podcast episodes in existence. (Podcast Insights via iTunes, 2020)
75% of Americans age 12+ (approximately 212 million people) are now familiar with podcasting. (Edison Research, 2020)
Monthly podcast listening now at 37%. (Edison Research, 2020) 39% of men and 36% of women age 12+ in the U.S. are monthly podcast listeners. (Edison Research, 2020)
Podcasts now reach over 100 million Americans every month. (Edison Research, 2020)
45% of those in the U.S. age 12+ have listened to audio in a car through a cell phone. (Edison Research, 2020)
2. What's Content Marketing?
The purpose of content marketing is to create and share relevant written, downloadable, and visual media so your target audience can learn about your brand, expertise, and products or services.
Content marketing statistics inform your strategy and provide insight into the ways other content marketers are solving the pain points of their target audience and generating leads. This will allow you to determine which techniques will work best for your business, customers, and leads.
3. A 4-steps Content Marketing Strategy
I'll need to carry out this strategy for several months, so it would be easier to manage a strategy based on a few steps.
My 4 Steps:
Articles (once per week) - They can be useful to generate posts (e.g. for Linkedin, Twitter, etc.). My goal would be to publish at least 2 posts per week - 8 per month.
Videos (once per week) - with an article I'm collecting my corporate experience + literature. It makes sense to have a discussion about this topic with a past/current client or with a prospect. This 15-20 min video can be live-streamed and published in several platforms (e.g. Meetup) + posted on Youtube.
Podcast (once per week) - Once the video is recorded, any decent video editing software can easily isolate the microphone signal, which can be used for a podcast series.
Email Marketing (two emails per month) - The material so far produced can be summed up in a single email sent to our subscribers.
Easy, isn't it?
4. Tools and hacks to make it happen
For Articles
Medium - First option is to publish articles on your blog / website. You can also publish the same content on Medium.
Google Trends - Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across the World. While it doesn't give you specific numbers of search quantities, it clearly shows what's trending and what's not. When I have several topic ideas, I will compare them in Google Trends to narrow down which I should spend time researching and writing about.
(#HACK) Backlinks - the more links directed to your article you have, the better. In some cases, you just need to have 10 backlinks to achieve a top 10 results on Google. Here the suggestion is to post this article on places like Linkedin, Medium, other posts on your blog, Quora, etc.
Quora - Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, and followed by users. It is a great place to find questions users are asking about your topic/niche. Simply enter your topic in the search bar and see all the questions asked about it. These questions are a great place to start for content writing topics.
Canva - Great free tool for graphics and images.
Freelance writers - to speed up the publishing process and improve the SEO, you can hire freelancers. There are may platforms. I prefer UpWork.com
(#HACK) Content Explorer - This is a great tool (unfortunately not free, but relatively inexpensive). You can search which keywords and topics are trending + find those websites that are attracting most of the traffic. I'd suggest you to get in contact with them and try to collaborate over the topics you'd like to publish about. Here a cool tutorial about Content Explorer - The All NEW Content Explorer 2.0 By Ahrefs
Tracking Engagement - Create a Google Data Studio Dashboard comparing content engagement across all blogs and social media posts. This will determine where to spend our time/effort
For Tech Talks / Webinars / etc.
Live vs Recorded - You can eaither record your talk and broadcast it, or do a live. For recording, Zoom conference virtual space works pretty well. For Live, you can choose among a lot of possibilities (Youtube, Linekdin, YouStream, etc.).
(#HACK) Broadcast a recorded video as a Live - Yes, you can do this. Morally ok IMO. YouTube together OBS can do this magic. Here a video explaining how to do it - How to Live Stream A Pre Recorded Video to YouTube Using OBS
(#HACK) Leverage Meetup groups - You can publish your tech talks (video or event) on LinkedIn, Twitter and Meetup groups. Meetup groups are especially interesting as some of them reach a crowd of a few thousands people and they are really focused on specific niches. My suggestion here is to create an event (e.g. with Eventbrite ) and ask group admin the possibility to publish your events in their group.
For LinkedIn / Twitter posts
Graphics - You can achieve a professional result with Canva
For podcasts
You can publish them on a dedicated YouTube channel (easiest option) + repost it on your website blog
Later on, you can publish them on podcast platforms (e.g. Spotify)
Understand your listeners - here a great article about Understanding The Podcast Audience in 2020
For Email Marketing
Canva - for graphic design
Mailchimp - easy design + free till 1200 recipients + you got a score associated with each member of your audience to understand how many times they clicked/opened your email
About the authors
Francesco Impari - Master in Public Policy at the UC Berkeley, Aerospace Engineer, book author, and scientific articles contributor. He has established and managed companies in China, Italy, UK, and the USA, bringing them from zero to their first million-dollar revenue (without VC funding).
Danny Wohlner - Digital strategy for countries, regions, start-ups, and agencies around the world. Using a first-principles approach to client goals, defining KPIs, and building acquisitions funnel campaigns. Decision making with a data-first approach.
Now that you are here
Holborn is a Sales advisory boutique, specialized in supporting high-tech firms in the B2B market development.