What REALLY makes content marketing a success? Find out in this SMX London presentation about content, keyword research & the art of audience engagement.

1. #SMX @KevGibbo
Kevin Gibbons, Managing Director, BlueGlass
The 3 Pillars of
Content Marketing
www.BlueGlass.co.uk

2. #SMX @KevGibbo
Photo Credit: James Marvin Phelps
Let’s start with the PROBLEM…

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Photo Credit: James Marvin Phelps
Oops, not that problem...
This one:

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Photo Credit: James Marvin Phelps
Getting Your
Content Seen
is HARD!

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You Need to Stand Out From the Crowd…
You need to fight for
attention against:
● 347,222 tweets
● 4,166,667 FB likes
● 300 hours of YouTube
video
Every single minute!
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of the printing and typesetting
industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the
industry's standard dummy text
ever since the 1500s, when an
unknown printer took a galley of
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type specimen book

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Photo Credit: James Marvin Phelps
But… What if your
content marketing
just “worked”?

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What Does Content Marketing Success Look Like to You?
You have a strategy aligned with your business goals, with a clear plan on how to achieve
them...
You produce creative content which your audience loves and attracts more of the ‘right
kind’ of prospects (those who buy!)
You earn outstanding coverage from publishers, media and social influencers
You continually increase online revenue via organic search and other channels, to acquire
new customers and retain existing ones

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First, You Need To Break Down the Silos...
Make sure you create an action plan based
on these 3 key pillars of content marketing:
1. Strategy - SEO & content strategy
2. Creativity - Outstanding content
creation
3. Promotion - Digital PR & social media
coverage
Being aligned in all 3 of these areas is vital
in order to hit the sweet spot of content
marketing results.

10. #SMX @KevGibbo
We Restructured Our Team Around the Content Lifecycle
To provide the right mix of the right skillsets and ensure that everyone knows what’s happening
throughout the process.Content marketing requires a team approach:
1. Content Strategist
2. SEO Strategist
3. Digital PR Specialist
4. Paid Social Specialist
5. Account/Project Manager
That helps everything to work much more
smoothly, everyone understands the brand
well and it allows us to have the right skills in
place at each stage with a more agile
approach towards getting things done...
James Barrass-
Banks
Social Media Specialist
Samuel Hurley
SEO Strategist
Jacob Roberts-Mensah
Digital PR Specialist
Claudia Donia
Project Manager
Irma Hunkeler
Content Strategist

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Think Bigger - Content Marketing Isn’t a One-Off, You Have to
Keep Building On It...
If you have a clear goal from the start, you can
start to think bigger with your content marketing.
This is often where things go wrong - don’t get
distracted by the shiny new exciting/cool things
straight away…
The best results are rarely the big spikes, but those
that gradually improve month on month on month.
To achieve this, you don’t need a campaign - you
need a strategy to make you a content authority.

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Pillar 1: You Need a STRATEGY to Understand Where You Are,
Where to Go & How to Get There...
Take time to:
● Auditing your existing content to identify strengths & weaknesses
● Analyse your on-site SEO strategy to make sure you have a solid
platform to build from
● Build a clear content strategy & editorial calendar to identify
keyword and topic gaps.
● Understand your audience - who are they, how do they
engage/convert with different topics and types of content?
● Have clear goals & visualise what success looks like -
benchmarking the marketplace to report on real business metrics.
Once you have a clear strategy and goals in place, you can start to build your plan of
attack...

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Pillar 2: Use Your CREATIVITY to Stand Out From the Crowd
Create thought leadership and engaging content to drive
awareness from target customers & authority publishers…
The final outcome is to produce great content which can be a powerful
tool for driving natural links, large volumes of targeted traffic,
audiences and brand advocates.
● Research, research, research - what campaigns have
worked well before? What data do you have or can you
collect?
● Creative brainstorming - get your thinking caps on to find
the right stories your audience love to share.
● Producing outstanding content - create great content
which serves the need of the your audience
● Find the right content type for your audience - mix it up,
think about how you can have the best impact
● Collaborative feedback process - you need to ensure all
content is on-brand, has high impact and is delivered within
a timely campaign cycle.

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Pillar 3: Generate the PROMOTION to Become
an Authority Within Your Industry
● Build digital PR relationships to get your content
featured on some of the most popular publishers
within your vertical
● Build an audience to turn your visitors into regular
readers
● Target social influencers to maximise the impact and
engagement of content campaigns.
● Leverage paid social advertising & content distribution
to amplify content visits and engagement.
Creating great content isn’t enough - sometimes it needs a little push…
With a targeted promotion strategy for content campaigns, you can ensure that you maximise
coverage, traffic and readership.

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When This All Works Together, This is What You Can Achieve...

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You’re Creating Content Assets to Build An Audience,
Not Just Traffic or Links
1. Identify – who is your target audience and where can you find
them?
2. Acquire – acquiring traffic to your content, across marketing
channels.
3. Nurture – provide content your readers love, in a content hub
environment you control.
4. Engage – by providing consistently great content, the goal
should be to continually create outstanding & engaging content.
5. Capture – provide useful content upgrades such as free tools,
insights, ebooks, reports etc to build your audience.
6. Grow – build real loyalty and advocacy with your readers, which
can have a huge benefit in sales further down the customer
journey and in scaling word of mouth referrals.

17. #SMX @KevGibbo
Make Your Customer the Hero,
So They Can Do the Talking For You
90% of decisions are made by
emotional feeling, not rational.
When people share content, they share it
about themselves not you...

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Remember, If You’re Scared to Fail,
You’re Playing Too Safe & You’ll Lose
● I don’t want to look stupid...
● Why would I share all of this information
if people can then copy it…
● What if everyone knows this already...
● My competitors will know everything if I
share this…
What people don’t get, is the
biggest risk is not doing it!

19. #SMX @KevGibbo
This is What Happens When Content Marketing
Comes Together
● Strategy: supporting development of a content hub in order to build
educational & informational content targeted towards potential
customers at an early buying cycle phase.
● Creativity: we built a content strategy focused around key topics,
hiring nutritionists & providing authority content writing/visuals.
● Promotion: we secured coverage from 93+ authority health and
fitness publishers.
● Result: the end result was a 144% YoY increase in organic search
traffic.

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Summary

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Start With The End In Mind
Make sure you know what success looks like and create
an action plan based on these 3 key pillars of content
marketing:
1. Strategy - Content & SEO strategy
2. Creativity - Outstanding content creation
3. Promotion - Digital PR & social media coverage
This way you can maximise results, by combining data-
driven analytical strategy, creative content and
authoritative promotion. Securing you authority
coverage, links, engagement, traffic and ultimately sales
and revenue.

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Thank you for listening...
If you have any questions, please tweet or email me:
● @kevgibbo
● kgibbons@blueglass.com
● www.blueglass.co.uk