5 Elements to Consider for Successful Content

Marketing

A Shweiki Media webinar

Joe PulizziToday’s marketing environment

celebrates in-house content as a

must-have for any business trying to

grow and retain an audience. Here

Shweiki Media Printing Company

teams up with Joe Pulizzi, founder of

The Content Marketing Institute and

author of Epic Content Marketing, to

present a must-watch webinar

educating viewers on five elements

to consider for quality content

marketing.

What is content marketing?

Nine out of ten businesses use content marketing in some way. Unfortunately, just 40 percent believe

that their content marketing is effective. How many businesses have a content marketing strategy?

Less than 30 percent.

Content marketing is the idea that one is going to create valuable, compelling and relevant content, on

a consistent basis, in order to attract and retain customers and create some kind of a behavior change.

Consistency is key. The reason most content marketing programs fail because they stop, or they are

inconsistent. Instead of looking at the traditional media model where one creates content in order to

monetize their audience through advertising or paid content, one should create an audience to

generate trust and credibility and be able to sell more products or services down the line. There’s no

direct sales information in the content marketing. That’s the key.

1. There are only three reasons why one would induce any kind of content program: to create

sales, to replace another initiative in order to save money or for sunshine–aka doing things to

create happy and loyal customers, retain customers and encourage customers to buy more.

Element 1: Sales, Savings, or

Sunshine

Sales

If one looks at the website itself, one might think

that the blog is a media site for copywriting. But

after taking a closer look, one will realize that

Copyblogger is not a media company but a

software technology company—one that

generates the majority of their revenue from their

200,000+ subscribers. Copyblogger goes out and

creates ongoing and amazing content. They then

get viewers to opt in to their email newsletter or

blog, and then down the road—after they have

developed a relationship with their audience—

they end up selling products to them.

Savings

Jykse Bank out of Denmark wanted to get their

name out to Denmark football fans and engage in

some sponsorship, which would traditionally cost

them millions of dollars. So instead of paying to

piggyback space on someone else’s content, they

decided to create Jyske Bank TV, a television

station run directly out of Jyske Bank headquarters.

Jyske actually thinks of themselves as a media

company, and they have a state-of-the-art studio,

they have developed an audience, and they are

generating an extra tens of thousands of people to

their site. In the end, those same football organizers

who had required that Jyske Bank pay millions for

sponsorships are now asking them to provide media

coverage for free, all because they have a new

developed audience.

Sunshine

The Furrow is a great example of what we would

call sunshine. It started in 1895, and today John

Deere is publishing content to 40 countries, in 14

different languages, with a 1.5 million in

distribution. That is the largest media operation in

the farming industry, and they’re not even a media

company. This exemplifies the value in becoming a

leading expert in one’s industry—no matter what

the industry is.

Element 2: Create a content

marketing mission statementOne of the first things one does when launching a media company is creating an editorial

mission statement. If one is going to do content marketing in any way, create a content

marketing specific mission statement to build one’s campaign around. Procter and Gamble

have a great example of a mission statement with their “Home made simple” web campaign.

Their developed statement is, “Enabling women to have more time with their families.”

Why is this so important? Off-topic articles and strategies are instantly omitted due to a lack of

coherence with the statement. This means that P&G’s target audience will always have content

that is relevant to their wants and P&G’s brand. Since the home made simple launch in 2003,

P&G have gathered at least 6 million subscribers to their site.

Element 3: Don’t build your content

ship on rented land

Starbucks is a company with approximately 37 million Facebook likes to date. They have spent millions

in social media advertising trying to attract an audience. The problem with this strategy is that we know

from Facebook algorithms that one’s audience only sees about 5% of organic posts. Pulizzi calls this

phenomenon building one’s content on rented land. Although Starbucks is a major corporation with

enough of a budget to sustain this kind of spending, Pulizzi encourages content marketers to drive

traffic to a website or page that one can call their own. This way one will be communicating to 100% of

their targeted audience.

Element 4: Leverage influencers,

then build an audience. A lot of people work with influencers but few

have a strategy on how to use those

influencers to generate an audience. Pulizzi

has a technique he uses to build an

audience that he calls social media 4:1:1.

To begin 4:1:1, one first gathers a list of all the

influencers that are driving one’s target

audience. Then (using Twitter as an example

platform) tweet out 6 original tweets (4+1+1).

Moving from right to left in the diagram, one can

begin their 4:1:1 by tweeting a sales tweet

(coupon, new product, etc.). The 1 in the middle,

thats one’s own content marketing (blog,

ebooks, podcast) and then the 4 on the left are

tweets coming from one’s influencers (complete

with @ tags recognizing one’s influencers). The

key to a successful 4:1:1 is consistency. Pulizzi

recommends at least a month of regular

tweeting before any sort of recognition will come

from the influencers themselves and their

gathered audience.

Element 5: Open up the wallet

Sometimes a subscriber list may be worth purchasing. Years ago, JPG magazine (a photography-

based magazine) was going bankrupt. An investing group Adorama ended up buying the flailing

company, specifically because JPG’s audience was congruent with their own needs (Adorama sells

photography equipment). Although JPG’s print model wasn’t profiting, Adorama decided that the

niche-specific subscriber list was worth paying for, opening the group up to a wealth of targeted data

Adorama could only accumulate by spending. If one comes across a group that has a wealth of data

information but isn’t sure how to monetize it, it might make sense to either purchase the data as a part

of one’s own company, or partner with the group to help encourage monetization.