The document discusses content marketing basics and strategies. It explains that there are 27 million pieces of content shared daily and defines content marketing as telling your own story to potential customers and distributing that content to the right audience. Experience Columbus improved their website traffic and visits by 40% by starting to tell their story through blogging. The document provides tips on developing a content strategy, different content formats and types, using editorial calendars, promoting and distributing content, and measuring effectiveness through auditing and analytics.

2. Content Marketing Basics
Joe Vargo
Interactive Marketing Strategist
Experience Columbus
@Joe_ExpCols

3. The State of Content
There are 27,000,000 pieces of content
shared online each day.
(Nielson/AOL)

4. What Does Content Marketing
Really Mean?
Production and Distribution
• Telling your own story in a way that
resonates positively with potential
customers
• Getting that content in front of the right
potential customers at the right time.

5. Why Content Marketing Works
• Many products are commodities. Stories
make them experiences
• Customers want to spend money with
brands that make them feel good
• Increasingly savvy and easy-to-use
marketing tools help get your messages to
very specific audiences in the right
timeframe

6. How Content Marketing
Works for Experience Columbus
• Situation: ExperienceColumbus.com was
losing site traffic to Google
• Action: We started telling our own story
better, through blogging
http://experiencecolumbus.com

7. How Content Marketing
Works for Experience Columbus
• Result: Over the past year, blog traffic now
represents 1 out of 2 visits, aggregate
visitation is up 40%
• Future Steps: Integrate blog content
deeper into the full site

8. Content Is a Piece of the Strategy
• Content needs distribution, so don’t forget
everything else:
– Public relations
– Advertising
– Web site
– Search engine marketing
– Social media
– Email

9. Content Strategy
• Questions to consider before you jump in
– Who is your audience?
– What are your key messages?
– What are your sales/marketing goals?
– What keywords are you most interested in?
– What timing/frequency is right for each
message?
– What is your voice?

10. Effective Storytelling
• What stories can you and only you tell?
• What stories can you tell that no one else
is telling?
• What stories can you tell in ways no one
else is telling them?
• What stories contribute to your underlying
marketing messages and sales goals?

11. Content Formats
• Blogs
• Photos
• Video
• Infographics
• Web Sites/Micro Sites
• Podcasts
• eBooks

12. Content Types
• Evergreen – You are the publisher, and it
will always be valuable/ relevant
• Curated – Reviews, user generated
content, news articles, etc.
• Co-Produced – Guest bloggers,
influencers, team collaborations
*Don’t forget to repurpose

13. Editorial Calendars
• Excellent tool to plan content strategically
• Can be simple or techy

14. Distributing Your Content

15. Promotion
• Even small advertising budgets with mass
social media networks can make a big
impact.
• These can all be done in-house with a little
training in 5 minutes or less
– Facebook – any cost
– YouTube – any cost
– Twitter – higher cost to start campaigns
– Paid Search

16. Distribution Exercise: Facebook
• Goal: Promote a new blog post about kids’
menus in Columbus to interested
consumers, using Facebook
• Budget : $100

17. Measurement: Content Auditing
Purpose: verifies that your content is getting
engaged with, helps prioritize future content
Tools: Google Analytics, social metrics

18. Experience Columbus’ Content Audit
What we learned:
• Our blog has seen a 200% increase in traffic year-over-
year. When we looked deeper we found:
• Posts about a single attraction or restaurant
underperformed
• Posts written by guest bloggers were among the
least-read
• Posts focused on lists and tips were the most-read
• 25% of our content brought 60% of our site traffic
• The worst-performing 30% of posts brought just
7% of site traffic

19. Experience Columbus’ Content Audit
How we changed gears:
• We are extremely selective and hands-on with
guest bloggers
• When partners ask for a feature, we incorporate
their message into a post with a broader theme –
less content, but many more readers
• We write more evergreen content so we can
promote it longer
• We plan editorial calendars quarterly to capitalize
on trends and focus efforts

20. Example: Whole Foods
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story

21. Example: Whole Foods

22. Example: Louisiana Seafood Board
http://www.louisianaseafood.com/

23. Questions?
Joe Vargo
Interactive Marketing Strategist
Experience Columbus
@Joe_ExpCols