Content Marketing: 97 Tips For Better Ideas, Strategies & Results

From creating a viral app on an $80 budget that resulted in a TED talk, to influencing whole departments of major record labels and celebrities to seed my content, I’ve had a lot of fun with content marketing over the years. I’d love to say that these outcomes were planned – they weren’t. In truth, it’s been a lot of trial and error, but for every campaign that didn’t go to plan, lessons were learnt.

Below is virtually every useful tid bit I’ve learned about content marketing and producing shareable content. To make things digestible, I’ve categorised the tips into five categories: ideation, strategy, execution, distribution, and measurement.

Ideation

When producing great content, the Pareto Principle applies: 80% of success is in the idea, and 20% in the execution. Investing in better ideas is often (IMO) the most effective area to improve on. Here is a bunch of tips to get some good ideas flowing.

1. Read Edward De Bono’s books. He pioneered the term lateral thinking, and is generally considered the godfather of creativity and idea generation.
2. Go for a coffee or jump on Skype with a customer or someone smart in your industry. These people know better than anyone else what challenges they have. I wrote this post on recovering from the panda update after speaking to 3-4 people in the same week about panda strategies. It’s one of the most visited pages on our site.
3. BBC on this day – A great tool for finding key events on certain days of the year from years ago. Kudos to Lexi Mills for recommending this in her BrightonSEO talk.
4. What myth do the majority of your industry believe is true? Could you provide a compelling argument that the opposite is true? A few years ago, I wrote up an experiment called “What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links in 24 Hours?” which ended up on Whiteboard Friday, The Guardian, HuffPo, Forbes, and a few others. I suspect it got the publicity it did because it was surprising and debunked a myth that many SEOs believed at the time.

   

5. Ubersuggest – this tool is essentially Google Suggest on steroids. Type in a keyword and it will output the most searched for phrases surrounding that keyword.
6. Google’s Keyword Planner – handy for checking that people are searching for what you’re intending to write about. It’s also useful in finding suggestions surrounding your keywords.
7. Use SocialCrawlytics to identify your competitor’s most shared posts.
8. Brainstorm with friends or colleagues.
9. Visit forums and see what people are talking about in your industry right now.
10. Use Google Hot Trends to find breakout trends.
11. Soovle – Similar to Ubersuggest, except it also finds suggestions from YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, and others.
12. Check Quora or Yahoo Answers to see what questions people in your industry are asking. Answer them.
13. Use Open Site Explorer to find the most linked to blog posts on news sites. Write a follow-up or similar (better) story.
14. Pick something novel or unusual about your niche.
15. Look at exceptional examples of content campaigns in other niches and replicate in your niche.
16. Identify questions at each stage of the company’s sales process and create content that answers them.
17. Setup Google Alerts on your focus keyword and keep an eye on trends around that term and what others are writing about.
18. Read new and best-selling books in your industry. Pull out any noteworthy or controversial ideas and write about them.

19. Use Trendsmap.com – find out what is trending on Twitter in your city (or in other major cities). This is great for agile content marketers due to the real time filtering of trends.

20. If you’re struggling to think of game-changing creative ideas, think about what would be useful. Useful content is more likely to outlive the novelty of a one-off viral idea.
21. Install Evernote and clip any interesting facts or findings while browsing the web. This will provide a useful pool of ideas to write about.

Strategy

Before producing your content it’s worth having a think about what triggers, hooks, and tactics you can entwine into your content to increase the likelihood of it driving your intended action. While this list could go on forever, I’ve just highlighted some key things that will hopefully get you thinking!

22. Vary the types of content you produce. A report from MarketingProfs / CMI suggested that the brands that are most effectively using content marketing are, on average, using 14 different ways of creating content, opposed to an average of eight ways used by less effective brands.
23. If you want to scale your content marketing, use user-generated content, YouMoz style.
24. In Good to Great, Jim Collins says “It’s just as easy being great as it is being good. It just takes more discipline”. I’d argue that this applies to content marketing. Create the best content in your industry. Don’t settle for good.
25. Stick to your guns. It’s hard to get content marketing right the first, second, or third time round. Stick with your content marketing plan for at least a year.
26. Fill a gap in your niche – if everyone is writing blog posts, cut through the noise with video. When everyone zigs, zag.
27. Leverage the reach and power of major publishers in your niche.
28. Develop content for the long tail.
29. Plan ahead but also be able to be spontaneous.
30. Mark public holidays, national events on your content planner.
31. Write long-form content. I’ve found that blog posts that are at least 1,5000 – 2,000 words tend to rank for competitive terms (and lots of long-tail variations) much easier.

    

32. Infographics and case studies are typically the most shareable form of content. In the music industry, I analysed the number of shares & links for over 15,000 pieces of content and found that on average infographics generated 198% more shares than blog posts.
33. Use Trello to plan, manage, and collaborate on your content strategy.
34. Make your content relevant in different territories. Don’t just translate, localise.
35. Create a strategic plan document. It’ll take a few hours but it’s one of the most valuable exercises you can do. I recommend this one by Quicksprout.
36. Recycle your existing content in different mediums e.g. turn your video into a Powerpoint presentation and upload the slides to Slideshare. Record a 90-second video summarising your most popular blog posts.
37. Curate. We received over 800 social shares on this post, which is just a curated post of 30 inspirational quotes in the music industry. Write a ’10 TED talks for [insert your industry] post, or round up the best posts in your industry at the end of the month / year. You don’t always need to invest in producing new content.
38. Pick whether you want an evergreen strategy or a recent-news strategy. Both work, but I much prefer evergreen content marketing as it lends itself to compounding results over time. If you go down the news / recent content route, you have to commit to it.
39. Produce content at each stage of your customer buying cycle.
40. Team up with the best people in your industry to add credibility. We recently released a whitepaper with Midem, who are one of the most respected brands in the music business. Having them as a partner added a lot of clout when pitching the report to the press.
41. Say nice things about the people you want to influence (and make them look great in comparison to their competitors). This is how I got Bloomingdales, EMI, Guy Kawasaki, and various other social heavyweights to seed my campaigns.

    

42. Share your timeless content again and again. There’s a Wordpress plugin for that.
43. Make people angry at your content – it’s one of the most powerful triggers to make people share.
44. Provide an informational resource that will likely be referenced over the years. The Moz algorithm change resource is a fantastic example of this.
45. Create a content calendar to keep track of what content you’ve already produced, and what you’d like to produce in the future. I use Trello (set in calendar view) for this.
46. Take advantage of newsjacking.
47. Protect the downside – brainstorm everything you can think of that could possibly go wrong and then mitigate as best as you can.

Production & Execution

Once you’ve got a handful of great ideas and a strategy that’ll knock your goals out of the park, it’s time to crack on with producing content and executing your plan. Here’s a variety of tools, productivity tips, money saving tips, and general useful pointers for producing content.

48. If you write blog posts, eBooks, or any long-form content, install Writeroom (for Mac) or Darkroom (for PC). It’s a full screen writing environment that eliminates all distractions when writing.
49. Either learn to be a brilliant copywriter, or hire one. It will pay off. What is it that makes Wish.co.uk’s content marketing stand out? Yes, their ideas are fantastic, but they’ve also hired exceptional copywriters to write amazing copy.

    

50. If you don’t have the resources to manually collect data for a campaign, use Toluna to create a survey and pay to have a statistically significant number of people fill it out. You’ll have data to include in a story within 24 hours.
51. I don’t whole-heartedly advise this (as they tend to look a bit tacky) but if you want to whip up an infographic quickly without hiring a designer, there are tools like infogr.am and piktochart. Useful for agile marketing and newsjacking when you want to be the first to create an infographic on a topic.
52. Stick to making one strong point per piece of content.
53. Google Public Data Explorer – a fantastic repository of interesting data that can be used to add weight to posts or infographics.
54. Don’t skimp on design – get the best quality imagery and design you can afford. Crappy stock images lose credibility instantly.
55. Design your content with your biggest critics in mind. When writing for the music industry, I often ask myself “Is this Billboard-worthy?” or “Would person X share this – what would make them HAVE to write about it?”.
56. Get the best tools for the job. My old colleagues at SEOptimise used to humour me about using Paint.net when designing visual content. Having (finally) moved to Photoshop I can see what they were getting at 😉
57. Implement Google Authorship on all of your guest posts. Sounds silly to mention, but most people still don’t.
58. Make sure the site you’re hosting content on is mobile-optimised. With 20+% of traffic on most sites now coming from mobile devices, it’s important your content can be consumed on mobile.
59. Have mentors – Every time I create a big campaign I run it past three or four friends who know their potatoes. The trick here is to find friends who are happy to pull your ideas to pieces, in a friendly and loving way, of course. Be sure to do the same for them.
60. Don’t be afraid to outsource aspects of content production to oDesk, just be smart about it (Matt Beswick and Paul Madden are the experts here). While it can be tough to find good graphic designers or creative types on these sites, I’ve found it to be a great for hiring people to do mechanical tasks like data collection, outreach, and programming.

Distribution & Outreach

The better your ideas, the easier and more effective your outreach will be. However, regardless of how strong your idea is you’ll need to do some pushing to get your content out there.

61. Appeal to people’s self-interest, not their gratitude or altruism. Always ask yourself “what’s in it for them?” – if nothing, expect a single digit response rate from your outreach.
62. Use Gmail Canned Responses to craft good email templates for outreach.
63. Use YesWare – it’s an email plugin designed for sales people to track whether someone has opened your email or not, but works just as effectively for outreach.
64. Follow up – people are busy and may put off your first email. I use a brilliant tool called Followup.cc which lets you put a time to follow up with someone in the BCC of an email, and then sends you a reminder email to follow up on that day.
65. Email marketing is the best way to drive a ton of people to your content in one go. Constantly build your list and use your newsletter as a strategy to get new content off the ground.
66. Be competitive – outreach can get boring pretty quickly. Set yourself a reward or be competitive with a colleague to stay motivated. Even if it’s something simple like “can’t have another coffee until I’ve sent 30 emails”.
67. Creating content is only half the battle. Spend as much time (if not more) promoting your content as you do creating it.
68. If you’re doing outreach for an industry you’re not familiar with, check out Linkdex network visualisation. This goes a step beyond tools like Followerwonk and Topsy to visualise the relationships between the different ‘nodes’ in a community. Here’s an example of what I did for the music industry.



69. If you’re hoping to send a piece of content viral, set aside some budget to launch it. Most viral videos and infographics that generated amazing results paid for it.
70. Quad-Bomb – I owe this technique to Noah Kagan. When you reach out to someone over email use Rapportive to follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at the same time. By seeing you all over the place in one hit, they’re more likely to respond to your email.
71. “Build your network before you need it” – Keith Ferrazzi, author of ‘Never Eat Alone’. Get yourself out to blogger and journalist meetups and build your contacts.
72. Use interviews to build your network of key players. Interviews tend to be pretty poor at driving interaction online, but they’re fantastic for building contacts and learning from the best of the best.
73. When outreaching to TV & broadcast media, think visually. They need something to point a camera at.
74. Use Buzzstream to keep track of your outreach and manage relationships.
75. Submit your blog to Google News. The uplift in traffic from current trends can be nice.
76. Use SocialBro to find the best time to post content (when the majority of your followers are online).

    

77. Use Edgerank Checker to find the best time and type of content to post on Facebook.
78. Hire freelance journalists – if possible, work with niche specialist journalists. They’re not too expensive, and it’s as close as you’ll get to guaranteed coverage!
79. For evergreen content, take a long-term approach with promoting it.
80. Use Followerwonk to find influencers in your niche.
81. Use HARO (Help a Report Out) to find opportunities to provide quotes or interviews for journalists. Usually results in a decent link or two.
82. Use Journalisted to find relevant journalists and their contact details.
83. Try Bloggerlinkup for finding guest post placements.
84. Try StumbleUpon Ads – SU’s self-serve ad platform is a controversial topic. I’ve had content go viral on StumbleUpon driving (literally) millions of visits, but it’s pretty low quality traffic. I’ve found that aspirational and image-heavy posts tend to work best on SU e.g. ‘The 19 Most Luxurious Getaways in the World’.
85. Try Reddit Ads – I’ve found them to be more cost effective (albeit harder to scale) than Google and Facebook advertising for promoting content. Great for seeding content.
86. Try Outbrain and other similar paid ad networks to seed content.
87. Aim for coverage on the top 5% of blogs in a niche. The rest will follow.
88. Make sure your outreach is personalised, persuasive and relevant.
89. Automate what can be automated without compromising quality. Focus your time and energy on creative tasks, not mechanical ones.

Measurement and Analysis

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you’re not gathering data and learning from your past campaigns, you’ll likely fall into this trap of doing the same thing, expecting different results.

90. If using Wordpress, install this Headline A/B split testing plugin. It works a treat for improving your headline writing skills over time.
91. If you’re promoting an interactive infographic, white paper, eBook, or anything that has or acts as a landing page, create a variation and split test that bad boy with VWO. Note: this only works if there’s an intended action from the piece of content e.g. a download.
92. Track the effectiveness of all of your traffic sources, especially paid ones. I’m OCD about this – but it pays off. In a campaign I ran last September it enabled me to increase revenue to a site by over 450% because I knew which traffic sources to scale up, and which ones to cut off.
93. Measure opportunities. In my experience, writing an epic blog post is more likely to lead to a speaking opportunity or a Skype call with someone awesome, than it is to get clients directly asking for our services. Measure the random opportunities that arise from your content, as they’re just as important, if not more so, than the number of likes.
94. Setup a GA dashboard to identify technical glitches in your content and/or keep an eye on which areas you should be scaling up or cutting back. For the aforementioned campaign, the GA dashboard I setup enabled me to see that Apple users converted much better than PC users, and that I wasn’t converting on mobile. This insight not only helped me iron out some responsive design bugs, but it also helped with refining our Facebook ad targeting.



95. To measure the tangible ROI of your content, setup goals and advance filters in GA to analyse direct sales or leads generated from your content. Branded3 wrote an excellent post on how to do this.
96. There’s no right or wrong way to measure content marketing effectiveness, but it’s generally smart to measure how many times a piece of content has been consumed (unique pageviews, downloads), how many times it’s been shared, how many leads it’s generated, and how much revenue it’s generated (directly and indirectly).
97. If you have enough data (and it’s relevant) track social sentiment using a tool like Brandwatch or Radian. Do this with a pinch of salt. I personally find that sentiment is something you feel, rather than see on a graph. However, I’m sure the two are correlated.

I hope this post has given you a few ideas or tips to think about and hopefully improve your next content marketing campaigns. If you have any questions or want to keep in touch, I’m @MarcusATaylor on Twitter, and can be contacted on Marcus(at)VentureHarbour(dot)com.