The document discusses the importance of developing a content marketing strategy. It notes that defining goals, understanding your audience, crafting quality design, planning the content lifecycle, and taking advantage of digital tools are key aspects of an effective content strategy. Specifically, it recommends setting a clear goal to focus efforts, making content relevant to different audience segments, investing in expert design, identifying how content will move through stages over time, and using tools to accelerate distribution. The overall message is that a well-planned content strategy can help organizations engage audiences and achieve their goals more successfully.
9. 35% of B2B marketers
document their content strategies
and conversely are more effective in all
aspects of content marketing than
those who have not.
Source: The Content Marketing Institution
33. We are establishing
the #CreativeCorner family as a set
of disruptive thinkers who do more
than just successful aesthetics.
34. A goal helps; focus your ambitions,
brings your content inline with your objectives
and sets a measure.
Goal
Audience
Design
Lifecycle
Mobilisation
35. Make your content relevant to each segment
of your audience.
Goal
Audience
Design
Lifecycle
Mobilisation
36. Invest in crafted content designed by experts.
Goal
Audience
Design
Lifecycle
Mobilisation
37. Identify the lifecycle of your content
to improve its reach.
Goal
Audience
Design
Lifecycle
Mobilisation
38. Take advantage of digital accelerators.
Goal
Audience
Design
Lifecycle
Mobilisation
Simon Brown, Founder / Creative of the design agency &&& Creative.
Why designing a content strategy matters, is the third in our series of design talks entitled ‘Content is King, Design is it’s Queen’
Aimed at sharing our passion for content and design. Along with strategies we have developed as a design agency.
Designing websites has been our core business at &&& for a number of years. We pride ourselves on building websites that are intuitive user-friendly experiences that are focused on answering the needs of our clients.
We are continually transformed our website design service in response to modern technology trends. The breadth of our service now includes responsive design, SEO strategy and content curation to name but a few.
However one issue we face time and time again is the simple fact that content and most importantly a content strategy are missing at the crucial design phase.
Without Content we are left to design merely the website structure.
Without Content the decision making process is flawed.
Without Content you may find that feature rich components are missing.
We now believe we, as a design agency, are entering a new era where our digital design will be focused on content production in all its guises.
The character Ray Kinsella from Field of Dreams said.
“If you build it, he will come”
This is a great analogy and from our experience is typically how websites without content or content strategies are designed.
This is not a great starting point for the majority of startups or SME’s given the statistics that per minute...
Youtube users upload 300hrs of new video... per minute...
Facebook users share 2,460,000 pieces of content… per minute...
Twitter users tweet 277,000 times… per minute...
The question is how will your content be found by the 2.4 billion who make up the Global Internet Population.
With out a content strategy at the core of your digital project it more than likely the outcome of all your hard efforts will be…
‘if you build it, possibly they will come.”
There is no one size fits all solution to building a content marketing strategy.
However there are reliable statistics available that illustrate the value of a developing and implementing a content marketing strategy...
According to the Content Marketing Institution…35% of B2B marketers document their content strategies…
...and conversely are more effective in all aspects of content marketing than those who have not.
I am going to show you our insight into structuring a content marketing strategy from a Design Perspective.
Giving you the essentials to build upon, interpret and customise to fit your situation.A content strategy should be at the heart of your project!
The obvious place to start is with the basics just one piece of content.
We are not here to discuss producing wonderful engaging content so let’s assume you have a great piece of content something that’s irresistible…You publish it to your site, but what next…
The answer to developing a content marketing strategy lies with exploring what exists on the periphery of your content…
How you can make it work harder and evolve to suit your situation...
The key item on the periphery of all content is the Goal. It is the primary objective of any content marketing strategy.
It should encompass your ambitions, a realisation of what you do best and where you fit in. For example Drive people to your website Brand exposure Building a community on preferred platformA Goal helps;
Focus your ambitions,Brings your content inline with your objectives,& sets a measure for your content.
Identifying and segmenting your Audience is critical.
Who is your audience?Focus on where they communicate best…
Segment your audience into tangible sets that you can clearly reach or reach out too.Influencers - Are they key to your goal? How will you be on their radar?...VIP’s - How will you communicate with them and how often?...Early Adopters – What do they look like?...Voyeurs - How will you transform them into brand advocates?...
Make your content relevant to each segment of your audience.
Invest in carefully crafted designed content.
Employ experts to help with…
Words Pictures Videos
Invest in crafted content designed by experts.
The lifecycle is an overarching element of your content marketing strategy.
For some it will be…
The longevity of your content
How can you repurpose your content
For others it will be…
Identifying key touch points for your content
The lifecycle your content will have to work within
Identify the lifecycle of your content to improve its reach
Mobilise your content to organise and encourage a ‘group’ of people to take collective action on a ‘particular objective’.
It is clear that you will need to identify two things
Firstly who is the ‘group’. You will have segmented your audience into groups at the Audience stage.
and secondly what is the ‘particular objective’… You will have outlined your particular objective during the Goal stage
Down to mobilising your content
Utilise Digital accelerators
Don’t spread yourself too thin
Take advantage of updates in platforms...
Take advantage of digital accelerators.
Content looks very different when its has a documented strategy.
With a goal your ambitions are focused, your content is brought inline with your objectives and you have a measure.
With an audience you can make your content relevant?….
With design content can be engaging...
With a lifecycle you can improve the reach of your content...
With mobilisation you can identify the right digital accelerators…
Doesn’t content look different now…
I’m going to take you through 3 projects that have used this strategy to good effect...
The first project that we utilised our Content Marketing Strategy was on the website for the think tank Open Europe.
We are specifically going to look at the events channel which had to set them apart as;
Engaging advocates & mobilising supporters
Defining the event lifecycle was paramount…
Future event…
On Now…
Event summary…
The fourth place is what most people forget. ‘Generate a desire to attend’
Identifying the lifecycle show lead directly into the mobilisation phase
We choose Eventbrite for the booking system...
Synced this to WordPress so we only publish one...
We synced Eventbrite to Mailchimp so we can identify attendees…
We connected Eventbrite to Facebook so people could book tickets directly inside Facebook…
The lifecycle and mobilisation directly influenced the design.
We developed bespoke icon driven images for event types
We implemented a live blog symbol to identify content as live.
The event summary means we can art direct images and videos.
From one event we now have several clear pieces of content around one subject matter.
We used our content strategy to design the whole site…
The result was that in the first 2 months...
Twitter users increased to 3,036 followers...
Along with 13,541 new users visiting the main website.
The right tools for the job was the core to the website design and build for adrem recruitment limited.
www.adremgroup.com
The goal the website was to;
Increase customer loyalty
Position them at the heart of the creative community
We developed two buttons that changed the dynamic of what the audience did with the content.
The first button was add to your jobs….
Job cart a simple way to make a collection built on the shopping cart technology
The second was share… But hold on who wants to share a job on social media when your boss might notice.
We identified that it is typical that you might think of a friend when you see a job.
Therefore we made email the primary sharing option.
We developed two buttons that changed the dynamic of what the audience did with the content.
The first button was add to your jobs….
Job cart a simple way to make a collection built on the shopping cart technology
The second was share… But hold on who wants to share a job on social media when your boss might notice.
We identified that it is typical that you might think of a friend when you see a job.
Therefore we made email the primary sharing option.
Combined with the over all design the results speak for themselves.
Customer loyalty has drastically increased.
With returning visitors up a whacking 27%
People are spending more time on the site with the average duration up to 3.07mins
& the bounce rate has dropped by 22%
Creative Corner is latest initiative aimed at inspiring and educating creatives through shared experiences revealing the changing landscape of our creative industry, what it’s really like and what you need to succeed.
www.andandandcreative.com/tag/creative-corner
Its a monthly meet-up underpinned by the statement
‘Disruptive inspiration for inquisitive minds’
Our goal is to drive people to our site to
Book tickets
Engage with the content and share
Video struck us as the best way to get across what a Creative Corner is like.
We produced our first video and identified that through clear calls to action on YouTube.
Annotations…
Subtitles & CC…
Credits…
How we realised that only 52% of the video is watched
How we realised that only 52% of the video is watched
In response we took the video content and did more.
We produced a 15 second Teaser video that is shared to our social media channels.
In response we took the video content and did more.
We produced a 15 second Teaser video that is shared to our social media channels.
It improvements don’t stop there
We integrated a new feature on our site
Twitter video cards
Adding a component to the backend so when a video is shared it only shares the teaser video
We transformed the video into a gif and sent this out to segments of our audience
We scheduled a post on our Facebook page. Which allows us to add a call to action. Buy tickets, find out more….
We are establishing the #CreativeCorner family as a set of disruptive thinkers who do more than successful aesthetic.
In summary; A goal helps; focus your ambitions, brings your content inline with your objectives and sets a measure for your content.
In summary; Make your content relevant to each segment of your audience.
In summary; Invest in crafted content designed by experts.
In summary; Identify the lifecycle of your content to improve its reach.
In summary; Take advantage of digital accelerators.
Simon Brown / Founder / Creative Director of &&& Creative
For more design knowledge follow us on twitter @andandandltd