13. The Content Marketing Score
Quantify and benchmark your content influence on LinkedIn
Active Target Audience
Content Marketing Engagement
Business Decision Makers
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Content Marketing Score
Unique Members Engaged= =x Multiplier 750Active Target Audience
90,100
Members
12,000,000
Members
April, 2014
19. Know your audience.
Measure.
Match your message to mindset
Listen first – learn what’s at the heart of your audience
Step back from micro-level metrics – identify
bottlenecks
Notes de l'éditeur
brands as creators
enable brands to create compelling content
platform agnostic, conceptually – relevant for publishing in a social context
two things I’ve learned from best in class marketers on LI, what’s driving their success and two tools that LinkedIn has built out in order to help all marketers replicate that success
Start here – knowing your audience, the best are particularly effective at this
Understanding what’s at the core of your audience
Sounds simple – but we’re complex creatures
Precursor to success when content marketing
WHAT: (what do I mean by knowing your audience – know what’s at their heart, know how to talk to them)
Roy Williams – marketing consultant
Linkeded to Pavlov’s dogs – in which he was able to elicit a desired response on ringing a bell
If he’d used anything other than meat – this would have ended differently. Meat was close to the heart – reward.
Much like Pavlov associated the ringing of a bell, associate good content with your brand
What is good content? It involves understanding what’s at the heart of your audience – what makes them tick
Once you know that, you can build content that speaks to them in a language they understand, and helps build content which is relevant
WHY:
Key driver of content success – adds value, positioned as a trusted advisor
Relevancy drives positive associations, and lets you build that trust
But it’s not enough to simply know what’s relevant to your audience – because context matters.
WHY:
You’ve got to think long and hard about where your message will be seen, and where you’re publishing content.
Risk interrupting an experience – having it look out of place
Recognising the impact that context can have, TNS and LI teamed up on the MD
Summarize in one line (MD)
The action item coming out of this for marketers ..
HOW:
Was to match your message to mindset. When you’re publishing in a professional context, speak to your audience in an aspirational manner. Brands that build content around these dominant emotions, succeed
That’s the first step in knowing your audience – understanding their mindset when they’re consuming content in different contexts, and ensuring your messaging is speaking to that.
This brings us back to the question – what should my message be, what’s going to be relevant for my audience – great question
HOW:
Let Dave answer – Likeable Social Media – his advice for marketers starting in social
We listen first, and listen carefully – to know what’s relevant
We never stop listening, because once we start publishing, our audience will be giving us feedback
But want to focus on the ‘Listen First’ because that’s where most marketers are stumbling
Each platform has their own way, we use TC
HOW:
TC leverages the understanding we have of how our members interact socially with content
Content preference profiles
What differentiates TC from other listening solutions, is it leverages the deep understanding we have of content
Whenever shared – 17,000 topic areas
We have a deep understanding of our audience, and our content
HOW:
If we’re trying to reach Singapore’s High Net Worth individuals, and are looking for content that has proven engagement with this audience on LinkedIn – we leverage Trending Content to help us tell a story about the type of content they’re engaging with. Leveraging that understanding we have on the topics that content shared onto LinkedIn is in relation to, we’re able to identify the top ‘themes’ or ‘topics’ that this audience is engaging with. As content marketers you can take these themes / pillars, and start building content around them – as these are the topics that your audience has a demonstrated affinity with .. In order to make these insights truly actionable though, you need to understand what the drivers of these themes are .. What is it about xyz that has engaged Singapore’s mass affluent? Because xyz will mean different things to different people. Trending Content allows us to dive deep, and understand specifically which pieces of content about xyz are engaging mass affluent’s .. Meow meow meow, very aspirational, plays perfectly into the context of LI. Listening tools will get you part-way there, but understanding exactly what your audience is consuming is critical when ensuring relevancy.
So that’s how LI answers questions around ‘what’s relevant’ on LI, other platforms will have their own way of answering that
Knowing your audience, is all about matching your message to mindset, so taking context into account, and listening to know what’s relevant
WHAT:
The second thing I see them do well, is they measure – content marketing measurement, a tricky beast .. any very easy to get caught up in every micro level detail we have available to us. But the best simplify, they find a way to measure influence, traction, impact, and they use that to guide them ..
WHY:
Because that which is measured, improves .. once we’ve found a way to quantify, we have a baseline or a benchmark established, and it becomes exponentially easier for us to answer the question – are we successful. The tricky part is finding that success metric.
HOW:
At LinkedIn, we wanted to help simplify this daunting task for marketers, using something called the CMS.
The CMS basically lets marketers, in a single metric, understand how they’re performing as a content marketer, relative to themselves, and relative to their peers, and provides us with a way in which we can consult with clients and identify bottlenecks in their strategy.
The metric itself is fairly straightforward – we look at the opportunity that a marketer had presented to them ..
And so, that’s how LI is thinking about content marketing measurement – taking a step back and looking through a macro level lens, to be a lot more strategic in how we measure content.
The best don’t get caught up and drown themselves in micro details, they approach their measurement strategically, and with perspective