Keeping to the plan of openly sharing our playbooks with clients, friends and followers, I’m hoping this overview of a typical Content Marketing routine helps you think about ways to be more productive and get better results. For more Playbook tools, visit the Resources page and help yourself. As usual, more links apppear below this article. Enjoy!
The following routine is – like most – idiosyncratic, but after some weeding and winnowing, I now have a handful of “go to” resources that work well for many situations. Your own results may vary, and certainly your own audience and goals will affect your choice of routine and toolset. That said, here’s one routine. Will it be the same a year from now? Probably not. Audience requirements change, tools evolve, and our “learning lab” approach reveals new findings every day. How does yours compare? Holla back, friends!
Overview
In about an hour a day, two to five days a week, I create, share, comment and research interesting, relevant content among my online community of Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, and several membership and nonprofit organizations I have joined or for whom I give presentations by invitation. I perform versions of this process for clients who have outsourced their Chief Revenue Officer and content marketing roles.
Overarching Goals
Simply put, the goal of any content marketing effort should be twofold: Uptake and Intake. Uptake refers to the echo effect of communities sharing and re-using original content. Intake refers to the process of linking all content to intake processes – landing pages, email responders, mobile apps, microsites, interactive tools, events, documents, etc.
To fulfill those goals, it helps to have the following workout goals:
- Cultivate an online voice
- Generate original noteworthy content
- Promote others’ noteworthy content
- Link it all to intake processes for generating business leads and monitoring/managing community dialogue
- Continually explore tools and techniques that facilitate “scale-up” i.e. maximizing results of time and effort.
- Link Content, Community and Conversion using a content mapping and planning tool like the one shown below.
Blog Routine
I write two articles per month for my two blogs. I write one article per week for each client blog I curate. When very busy, I let my own blogs lapse.
e-Zine Routine
FanFoundry Daily and SocialClimate Daily (Paper.li)
Weekly: Rotate the hour of publication each week to hit the 8 am and noon hours across US / EU .
Daily: Browse articles matching my pre-set keywords; re-tweet articles from the source where possible; move tweeted articles “above the fold”.
Hootsuite
Daily: Review the handful of Twitter accounts I own, as well as those I curate for clients – Stream, Mentions, Re-tweets, keywords, client community dialogue, as well as personal friends and professional groups; Re-tweet relevant content (see Paper.li above and Alltop.com below); Post relevant original Tweets – an article link, a meeting note, a convo thread, etc.; schedule client promotional Tweets to occur in the 8 AM and noon hours across US / EU time zones.
Daily: Scan Profile for InMail, Visits, LinkedIn news, and Connection updates. Send notes to Connections with noteworthy Updates (new job, interesting article, etc.); respond to discussion threads, invitations and queries.
Semi-weekly: Visit Discussion Groups; post article links; comment where my expertise warrants; start a Discussion (usually a research question for my own or a client’s business).
Alltop (virtual “magazine rack” of noteworthy bloggers)
Review the blogs I follow for timely and relevant articles. Re-tweet them, and flag interesting ones to link at the end of my relevant blog articles.
Databases
Each week we add new contacts to our main CRM database, classifying them by source, organization, industry, and several other criteria. Sorting on multiple criteria, we can usually find anywhere from a dozen to several thousand relevant audience members to whom we may email, Tweet or otherwise reach out and initiate or sustain conversations.
The database numbers around a hundred thousand, yet we are able to keep conversations personalized and theme-specific. This generates significant inbound interest and keeps us touch with clients, partners, friends and prospects. Shameless plug: our lifetime average open, click and conversion rates exceed industry norms.
They say you can only have about 150 members in your personal network before things break down; you can easily triple that number – or more – with an effective CRM database, compelling content and mobile/social/email marketing.
R&D / Sharpening the Saw
I condense notes from interesting and relevant magazine subscriptions (Forbes, Fortune, Wired, AdAge, BtoB, etc.). I file them under appropriate topics (in a list of 20). I update my portfolio of presentations with relevant statistical references from all sources.
I follow a handful of industry analyst heavyweights and key businesses.
I review my meeting notes and generate follow-up communications using my database, private email and, for larger audiences, email marketing software. I review trending topics on Twitter etc. to determine best topics for timely articles.
Trending topics I cover for myself and my clients include: marketing automation, branding, campaign management, community building, content marketing, customer care, email marketing, event marketing, interactive design, marketing communications, marketing funnel, mobile marketing, prospecting / inside sales, public relations, sales pipeline management, sales training, SEO, social media, and sustainability. Additionally, I cover trending industry topics for my portfolio of clients.
Other Tools – Analytics, Plumbing, etc.
All of the above may seem like a full time job, but couple of years of practice have transformed it to a daily one-hour process that we have adapted to suit many clients. It is all facilitated by an array of tools. You can find a reasonably updated listing of tools in the right sidebar. They include CRM, analytics, and assorted utilities that help leverage channel data for better client results. Examples: Klout, FollowerWonk, InMap, etc.
How does your routine compare? Got any tips to share? Holla back!
Thanks, and make it a great day.
Related articles
- The Time For Content Marketing Is Now | distilled (serve4impact.com)
- Content Contentment (SlideShare)
- Content marketing: Think like a publisher (trafcom.typepad.com)
- Content Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: What’s the Difference? (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
- Busting the Biggest Content Marketing Myths (ereleases.com)
- CONTENT MARKETING AND THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Content marketing is… (futurecomms.co.uk)