4. Introduction
Your Host
Hi, I’m Dane
- Social media marketing specialist of four years
- Author, poet and musician
- Industry speaker/commentator
- General Arts4Every1 busybody
7. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
Old-SCHOOL MARKETING IS DEAD
- Raise your hand if you can afford to run a TV ad. Precisely.
- Traditional marketing relies in interrupting people
- Radio ads
- Billboards
- Print ads
- Etc
- It’s also expensive and hard to measure
- Luckily, there’s an alternative!
8. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
Enter CONTENT MARKETING
- Content marketing, also called inbound marketing, relies on
allowing people to come to you
- i.e. instead of an ad saying ‘buy our paint’, a paint manufacturer
could run a blog on interior decorating tips
- That way, potential customers search Google for decorating tips,
read your blog article, appreciate your advice and buy your product
- Relies heavily on cheap/free online marketing tools
10. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
Further Examples
- Stand-Up Comedian: Tweeting a Joke of the Day
- Musician: Blogging about local music listings
- Novelist: Creating playlists of music to enjoy whilst reading
- Arts Centre Board Members: Shooting a video on how to host a badass event
11. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
You’re off to a good start!
- Copywriting is the most in-demand skill for modern day marketers
- Marketing theory can be learned much faster than the skill of writing
- Being able to use Photoshop and to make videos is also a plus
12. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
But there’s competition…
- We create more data every three days than we created from the down of history until 2010
- Approx. 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
- Almost 1 billion websites are online
- Roughly 4 million blog posts published every day
- It’s scary busy – look!
13. Introduction TO CONTENT MARKETING
It also takes time
- Which is why you need to PRIORITISE!
- I’m going to take you through a basic framework
- We’ll build on this in future workshops until you’re all marketing rockstars
- Let’s get started, shall we?
14. STEP ONE: GET A WEBSITE
You need a website. Really, you need one.
- I recommend Wordpress.com for beginners for ease of use (and it’s free!)
- There are guides you can find to help you to do this
- Create pages with basic info:
- About
- Portfolio
- Contact
- FAQs
- Anything else that’s relevant
15. STEP ONE: GET A WEBSITE
BLOG REGULARLY – ONCE A WEEK SUGGESTED FOR
BEGINNERS
- You’ll also want to create posts
- This bullet point is to remind me to explain the difference between pages and posts
- Try to release a new post once per week
- VERY important to do this if you want to be found through Google
- Also shows people that visit that you’re still active
- Include a call-to-action at the bottom of your posts (I’ll explain this, too)
16. STEP ONE: GET A WEBSITE
BLOG IDEAS:
- Progress reports on your work in progress
- Ask other authors for guest posts
- Lists (i.e. My Top Five Influences)
- Posts about things that inspire you
- Notes you take at events (like this one!)
- Bonus scenes/material
17. STEP ONE: GET A WEBSITE
FURTHER BLOG IDEAS:
- Interview other authors (or even your own characters)
- Republish previous work (but make sure it’s unique online content)
- Reviews
- Ask your readers what they’d like to see
- Fan fiction
- Anything else you can think of!
18. STEP TWO: GENERATE TRAFFIC
Traffic is the currency of the web
- So what is traffic?
- Common metrics: Visits, Unique Visitors, Page Views
- There’s no point having a website if nobody visits it
- Main traffic sources:
- Direct
- Organic Search
- Social
- Referral
19. STEP TWO: GENERATE TRAFFIC
direct
- Direct traffic comes from people typing in your website’s address
- Optimise for this by making it simple and short
- The easier it is to remember the better
- The best option is www.[writersname].com
- Include your website’s address everywhere
- Business cards, books, mention it during readers, etc.
20. STEP TWO: GENERATE TRAFFIC
ORGANIC SEARCH
- Traffic coming from search engines
- Writing regular posts will help this anyway
- Pro tip: Use a Wordpress plugin like Yoast to optimize your pages
- Start to think about what people might be searching for
- Look at the number of views that you’re getting
- Write more stuff like whatever’s working well!
21. STEP TWO: GENERATE TRAFFIC
SOCIAL
- Social networking sites!
- Most useful for writers:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Goodreads
- Instagram
- YouTube
22. STEP TWO: GENERATE TRAFFIC
REFERRAl
- People visiting your site by clicking a link from someone else’s site
- Doing things like guest blogs is a good way to get referral traffic
- Ask for links from other people (when relevant)
- Google cracks down on people who artificially try to build links to their site
- If your content is good enough, you’ll pick them up anyway
28. GUESTSPEAKER:
STEVYN COLGAN
Stevyn is a writer, artist and speaker with several books
to his name, including Joined-Up Thinking and
Constable Colgan's Connectoscope. He's also a bona
fide Q.I.ELF!
30. HOMEWORK
WRITING CHALLENGE
- Write something using synaesthesia!
- Experience one sense through another
- For example: The taste of music
- Write something and bring it to the next workshop!
31. HOMEWORK
MARKETING STUFF
- Sign up for a Wordpress website
- Start trying to release a post every 1-2 weeks
- Sign up for a social networking site that you’re not currently using
- Come back next time to learn what happens next!
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.
Google+: Search results are affected by users’ G+ activity.
Twitter firehose: Allows Tweets to be indexed
Search query volume increases: Due to social activity around a brand. Increased volume can affect rankings.
Site engagement: Social features (i.e. comments, social sign in) increase ‘stickiness’ of site, affecting rankings
High visibility: LinkedIn in particular tends to rank high in results pages.
Crossover: Blog writing/forum communities provide both social and SEO value.