Opt-out vs. Tune-inEpisodic vs. OngoingOwned and Earned vs. Bought
Pete Blackshaw recognized that SEO serves a foundational purpose for content marketing. Organizations need to bring in their keyword research and analysis experts to the table in helping to plot and plan content.Additional interview notes from Nestle’s Pete Blackshaw re: SEO …How are companies responding internally to the demands of content marketingall the above. at nestle we're probe talking it in all the ways you described. trying to figure out if there's a more focused, consistent strat. for getting to the right content prop. one of the first thing i discovered w in weeks of getting here is nestle was not showing up as part of the answer in any search queries like recipes, the obvious ones. embarked on this not exclusively to drive search strat. but have to be more part of the solution when cons are looking for brands or category answers. were world's largest food & bev. company, we should be doing really well. recipes should be a big focus. should look across a host: c-creation to video cookbooks to taking localized content and pulling it to gather. look across. food, cooking, pets.
Company culture (goes beyond the marketing dept - enterprise level demands, breaking down silos)Resource & Staffing - new skillsBudgets (content isn't "free")Service provider relationshipsNeed for TrainingAbility to not focus on bright shiny objects, but instead strategyIntegrating content with advertising and other marketing initiatives
Where is future content confidence held?SEO people need to be at the table at this point in the game in order to plan for the SEO of these new types of media.How do youoptimize non-textcontent?How do you optimize for mobile - one of the largest "confidence mediums" in the chart?Educational content is really easy to optimize but it's going down in confidenceLink strategies - social graphs in search - link strategies and keywords - that will all tie in here
Sales are a criterion when new apps are considered for development at GE, but utility matters just as much, as does speed-to-market. As far as GE is concerned, the time to develop apps for customers is now, before the wow factor wears off and while the company can still impress customers with an app's added value. Ease-of-use is also key. One app, geared to engineers in the field, is avilable on the iPhone, but also on the iPad. Why? "Because engineers wear gloves."Transformers: This colorful and vivid app allows customers, GE sales teams, and field service engineers to remotely monitor and diagnose GE transformers and transformer stations that supply electricity to homes and business around the country. The real-time sensor data helps improves efficiency and problem solving, which benefits both GE and its customers.
“Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company -- more than 67,000 customers use our cloud platform and apps to help run their businesses. Of the various social media channels we use to engage our community, YouTube has emerged as the most important for our business because it allows us to deliver a rich and concise message with perfect fidelity.We looked at a number of different approaches to publishing video both on our own website as well as other sites on the web. Given that YouTube is such a large percentage of online video, we knew it was a platform that we couldn't overlook. View counts are weighted heavily in search and are an important part of what makes a video interesting to other viewers.Today, all our video content is hosted on YouTube and we use the YouTube APIs to serve up videos in branded players on our website.”SOURCES:http://www.slideshare.net/Salesforce/video-creation-for-b2b-marketers (updated stats vs. interview below)http://ytbizblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/five-questions-for-jamie-grenney-senior.html
**Reference in book: Chapter 6 – Content That Informs and Educates, Branded Content That Informs and Educates (final section to the chapter) for Amex OPEN case study
Content audit - Assessing current content and determining how to make it work best with SEO principles - what content should be used as-is? Tweaked? Thrown out?-- Try to find a CASE STUDY that talks about content siloing - does it work?2. Keyword Research is only the beginning - Tons of SEO data is locked up in social graphs - how do you access that?3. Editorial calendar - include what keywords each piece of content will focus on -- Factoring in where content should be places in the site IA to create stronger SEO content silos – all part of the editorial calendar – more on this later, in education and training4. Connect to specific measurement KPIs 5. Focusing on the long-tail - The highest search volume words don't always represent the way the content writers would prefer to position their products - how to handle these problems? How can content be drafted and implemented to focus on the longtail? -- Some of the content examples in the balloon chart are much more longtail - win on lots of keywords that draw small amounts of traffic over time6. Get the right technology in place - Importance of building a link strategy into content - importance of a CMS that has a reasonable link structure - tech considerations as well
Content audit - Assessing current content and determining how to make it work best with SEO principles - what content should be used as-is? Tweaked? Thrown out?-- Try to find a CASE STUDY that talks about content siloing - does it work?2. Keyword Research is only the beginning - Tons of SEO data is locked up in social graphs - how do you access that?3. Editorial calendar - include what keywords each piece of content will focus on -- Factoring in where content should be places in the site IA to create stronger SEO content silos – all part of the editorial calendar – more on this later, in education and training4. Connect to specific measurement KPIs 5. Focusing on the long-tail - The highest search volume words don't always represent the way the content writers would prefer to position their products - how to handle these problems? How can content be drafted and implemented to focus on the longtail? -- Some of the content examples in the balloon chart are much more longtail - win on lots of keywords that draw small amounts of traffic over time
Slice 'n' dice: example: write a speech, create a deck, video speech, blog speech, post video to YouTube, deck to Slideshare, transcribe presentation. extract charts and infographics. Make the talk a whitepaper. An ebook. A column. Maybe it can be a webinar, or a training sessions.
Corning produced a corporate video for shareholders extolling the near-future of high-tech consumer products made of glass. Entitled, “A Day Made of Glass,” the six-minute video (that’s a very long running time on the Internet!) was shown in early 2011 at an investor event. Less than six weeks later, it was the most-watched corporate video of all time, with 8 million YouTube views and climbing (and a great example of recycling content assets).
Description: An organization that hasn’t yet realized the value of content marketing starts in the Stand stage. This organization may have dabbled in social media or created a blog, but activity is infrequent and not generally viewed as important within the organization. The marketing department relies almost wholly on “push” communications, such as e-mail marketing, direct mail, and advertising.While organizations in this initial stage may have discussed elements of content marketing, no internal stakeholder has made a case for content. These organizations require a catalyst to demonstrate the value that content can have on their marketing, communication, and sales teams before they can move into the second maturity stage and begin developing strategy to guide their efforts.
Description: An organization at the Stretch stage realizes the value of content marketing and begins to build the strategy and support necessary to create and publish content. Understanding develops that — while many of the tools and media are free — content requires an investment of resources. An executive sponsor is necessary to lead the program and communicate its value and reach to the organization. This executive sponsor is also tasked with identifying team members to engage with early channels, building basic forms of content, and evaluating potential agency relationships.Content is driven by the understanding that its focus must be around the company’s products or services, but very often not specifically about them. Content tends to be directed to one or two discrete channels (e.g., a blog, whitepapers, or articles; a Facebook page; or a YouTube channel).
BACKGROUNDIndium is a 75-year-old manufacturer of electronics assembly materials. Rick Short, director of marketing communications, has been there 25 years. Short realized several years ago that social media could be a powerful marketing force and he began experimenting with it on his own, blogging about topics of personal interest unconnected to Indium. When he began thinking about adding social media to Indium’s marketing mix, he first needed to help people at Indium understand that the tools in social media are available and can be effective for B2B. A blogging strategy was initially fought, as leadership believed it would violate social culture. However, Short disagreed:“Through the 75 years of our company we have always been about earning (customers) by developing great products or showing them how to enhance their process whether it’s through a technique or a product. So we’ve always had this great need to be socially adept and appealing to the needs of our customers… so it was a natural process to say, hey, there are some new tools available, why don’t we throw those into our bag of tricks?” Indium’s CEO and other leadership also believed that blogging would not be a good idea for the organization, as “blogging can live forever.” However, Short argued that other media can as well in the digital age and that the long-lasting nature of a blog is not a reason to inhibit its use. Rather than creating an Indium policy specific to blogging, Short led the creation and implementation of a more all-encompassing social media policy as a kickoff to the company’s blog strategy, setting a solid foundation for Indium’s foray into social media.STRATEGYShort started formulating Indium’s blogging and social media strategy with keyword research. He identified 73 of the most important keywords his prospective customers would search for. Then he created 73 different blogs that focused on each keyword and assigned a dozen employees to write those blogs.Blogging is now the most prevalent social media platform at Indium. The ultimate goal is to produce face-to-face contacts and relationships. Blogging advances close contact and, through the inclusion of video, photos, commenting, emails and phone numbers, Indium can invite customers to engage in conversations offline.Indium now has 15 blogs with 17 dedicated bloggers maintaining them (many of whom are engineers). The bloggers write about the nuances of each market segment, focusing on the keywords uncovered by Short’s research. Indium’s blog posts feature buyer oriented keywords likely to be searched. Headlines like “Wave Solder Flux Deactivation Temperatures Explained” and “Using Integrated Preforms for Solder Fortification” may not be interesting to most people, but if you’re on the market for solder, these are the details you need to know to specify the right solder. RESULTSOnce the blogs took off, customer contacts increased 600% in a single quarter. And everyone who contacted a blog author, commented on a blog post or downloaded a white paper opted in to the company’s customer database. Customers like circuit board manufacturers, solar panel manufacturers and the semiconductor industry. So what can you learn from Indium? It doesn’t matter how obscure your product or service is. As long as you fill a need in the marketplace, you have customers.“The mantra of my content program is simple: content to contact to cash,” states Short.SOURCES:http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-content-that-engages-prospects-and-customers/http://sarahsturtevant.com/wordpress/search-engine-optimization/indium-corp-proves-the-value-of-birthing-a-corporate-blog/http://www.briansolis.com/2011/03/b2b-social-media-lead-generation-explained/http://books.google.com/books?id=sFhq-cdX89wC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=indium+corp+social+media&source=bl&ots=DpbAePsJif&sig=FFlQXZ4nSyKJBEZ1SoeLgnmBRI4&hl=en&ei=_5nmTpuHA8eziQLv7LX-Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=indium%20corp%20social%20media&f=false
Description: In this stage, content creation and production get a solid strategic foundation organizationally. From channel specific (e.g., “we blog”), content begins to become channel agnostic and is distributed across a variety of channels and platforms. Processes are formalized. This is the stage at which a team begins to take shape, strategy is more fully refined and tweaked, and the team begins to establish governance to scale and shape content processes. Existing content, as well as potential sources of content, are identified and unified across the organization. Content is then formally audited and assessed, often with a formal scoring or grading process. Content is optimized for digital and social distribution, and efforts are made to identify repeatable, sustainable content modules and practices. The leader of the content group makes a more concerted effort to connect content development with all parts of the organization’s communication teams.
Per discussion with RL and JS: Eloqua – Eloqua tweaked keywords to qualify leads - looking for VPs and above.They refined their keyword strategy and presentation to appeal to that audience. Audience segmentation rather than use all the keywords like Indium did.Eloqua is a privately held company that sells digital marketing automation software. The company was already creating some content when Joe Chernov was promoted to the newly created role of chief content officer. Given the metrics-driven nature of the company’s products and services, Chernov knew he would have to prove the value of his own marketing efforts while creating content that positioned Eloqua as a thought leader in the marketing industry. Chernov launched a corporate blog and worked on a series of free ebook guides, white papers, webinars, infographics, and other educational content. He also hired a former journalist as a full time corporate reporter.Leveraging internal experts as bloggers, Eloqua's corporate blog reached the Ad Age Power 150 within its first year. Chernov used the blog to promote the company’s free content, made trackable by requiring visitors to provide their name, email, phone number, company and job title in order to download it. This data enabled Chernov to connect the dots between revenue and content. Four free guides were directly attributable to $2.5 million in revenue in 2010. Not only can Eloqua directly connect revenue with content, they can also evaluate lead quality. On average, 17 percent of visitors to Eloqua.com are VP or higher, but 25 percent of visitors who find the site via content pieces are VP or higher. The Takeoff stage of Altimeter's content marketing maturity model requires an organization to implement a measurement framework to demonstrate content’s value to the organization.
Description: This phase of the maturity model is the goal for most companies seriously committed to content marketing. The organization’s strategy is clear, as well as communicated throughout the enterprise at this stage. Focus shifts toward expanding the team and its ability to create experiential, engaging content rather than simply creating and publishing simpler stories and informational pieces. The processes for producing content are also more fully developed and strategic. Content is created with a view toward being reusable or repurposed across multiple media platforms. To achieve this, content must have a life of its own — decoupled from the brand, product, or service — to enable it to travel. Agency relationships are frequently deepened into longer engagements rather than episodic, campaign-based initiatives. Connections between the content team and the rest of the organization’s communication groups solidify, but there are still some growing pains/holdovers.Earned media increases in importance, as the organization’s efforts have existed long enough to sustain a constant flow of “earned” media that helps extend reach. Achieving earned content is often expressly a goal of the company’s paid advertising, while owned content is created with a view toward sparking conversation and other forms of earned media. A continual challenge is to achieve a resource balance that maintains both growth and equilibrium while remaining cost effective and to scale — and at the same time maintaining a high level of customer engagement. Yet even these sophisticated marketers can overly focus on “bright shiny objects,” the newest, most sophisticated, and technologically advanced digital channels, while overlooking basics such as search and e-mail.
Reference slide at beginning of preso: Pete Blackshaw recognized that SEO serves a foundational purpose for content marketing. Organizations need to bring in their keyword research and analysis experts to the table in helping to plot and plan content.Additional interview notes from Nestle’s Pete Blackshaw re: SEO …How are companies responding internally to the demands of content marketingall the above. at nestle we're probe talking it in all the ways you described. trying to figure out if there's a more focused, consistent strat. for getting to the right content prop. one of the first thing i discovered w in weeks of getting here is nestle was not showing up as part of the answer in any search queries like recipes, the obvious ones. embarked on this not exclusively to drive search strat. but have to be more part of the solution when cons are looking for brands or category answers. were world's largest food & bev. company, we should be doing really well. recipes should be a big focus. should look across a host: c-creation to video cookbooks to taking localized content and pulling it to gather. look across. food, cooking, pets. CASE STUDY:When Blackshawbecame global head of digital and social media, one of his first orders of business was fostering a “culture of content” within the executive leadership ranks. While Nestlé had long recognized the importance of content proliferation as part of its global marketing and sales strategy, Blackshaw believed further development was necessary if Nestlé wished to remain top-of-mind with its social-savvy consumers and boost product speed to market.Blackshaw flew a team of senior managers from company headquarters in Switzerland to visit entrepreneurial and fast-moving digital companies in Silicon Valley, notably Facebook. Nestlé’s executives were inspired by the social network’s constantly evolving and listening-focused company culture. Blackshaw cites the executive “field trip” as a success in helping the company more quickly adapt to changes in the digital landscape. He plans to continue content marketing training in 2012 with the launch of a company-wide training initiative. Other companies within the Ascend stage of Altimeter Group’s content marketing maturity model may pursue similar executive development opportunities to aid in the adaptation and advancement of their company culture and content strategies on divisional levels, as well as throughout the enterprise.
Description: This is the most aspirational phase of Altimeter’s Content Marketing Maturity Model. Only a handful of companies have begun to Run, primarily global CPG brands with a strong commitment to pop-culture marketing initiatives. In this phase, a successful, real-time integration of content marketing and curation is part of the fabric of nearly all aspects of branding. The organization has become a bona fide media company, actually able to monetize innovative and highly polished content that is either branded and/or related to the brand proposition. Content is sold and licensed based on its standalone merit, with content divisions having separate P&L responsibility.Earned media (specifically, consumer-generated content) often significantly outpaces owned media. Media shared between the company and its partners becomes an important asset. Multi- disciplined agency relationships are efficiently producing content that is high in quality, creative, and professional. Production and creative are often a full, standalone business unit. Content opportunities are discovered and leveraged that relate to a brand experience more so than around products or services.
Photos: Coca-Cola’s Tumblr and Facebook Fan page – user-gen photosOn Coke’s focus on user-gen content …Jon Mildenhall, Coca-Cola, in an interview with Rebecca Lieb in 2011:About a year ago did an audit on YouTube - 80% of stories were user-generated - may have been adapted from our original content - that's massive. Already, UG content and content that hits the conversation that doesn't come thru CC systems and traditional relationships are already the dominant force for us. We're also looking at different forms of content creation. A way that we can get content a lot quicker and cheaper. Although I have to engage 24 hours a day - looking at a more efficient way of developing content. That would mean we take partnerships with open source content creation companies - Mo Film (sp?) - more content with them over the last 3 years than any other org. On Coke’s recentTumblr content marketing endeavor, that also focuses on user-gen …Lisa Roebuck, senior integrated communications manager for the Coca-Cola Company, says in addition to original Coca-Cola-inspired content like photos, gifs and past ads, Coca-Cola plans to share content via re-blogging, including "positive, fun content" from within the Tumblr community. Images include Coke bottles on a fence in a field and a high-heeled shoe emblazoned with the Coke logo."We realize success depends on creating and curating fresh, quality content so we'll be featuring unique posts drawn from a variety of sources – such as branded materials, pop culture news and user-generated content," Roebuck adds.SOURCE:http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2136974/coca-colas-tumblr-shares-happiness
The Honda Element launch. RPA's campaign was part of a media blitz that included television and a website that sent visitors on a journey to interact with a talking crab, possum and lizard, to name a few.The search strategy included focusing on buying cheap keywords that one might not necessarily associate with a car launch media blitz. Bidding on the keyword "possum" is a lot cheaper than bidding on the term "automobile" -- or even "Honda Element" Yahoo search listings and bids for the terms tell quite a story.Top placement, keyword "possum”See the Possum in its Element Play a game with the Element and possum on an adventure-filled island. www.elementandfriends.com (Advertiser's Max Bid: $0.10)Top placement, keyword "Honda Element"Shop for a Honda Element at Honda.com Compare the Element to other vehicles. Request a quote today. www.honda.com (Advertiser's Max Bid: $1.15)According to RPA, the search portion of the Element budget just made it into double digit percentage points, yet it accounted for nearly 40 percent of responses. It is worth mentioning that other bidders on the word "possum" included pest control peddlers and those selling possum T-shirts. The campaign generated more than 100 million impressions with very low click rates, which raises the issue of relevance in search advertising.
Education is part of the process - SEO folks can't be there every step of the way. They need to train and educate people in marketing and other department on the link between SEO and content - so they can ensure all content generated is SEO-friendly.People need to feel they are integral to these efforts and not brought in after the fact.
An editorial calendar establishes what content will be created when, in what format, and for which content channel. A digital editorial calendar also tracks the connections for that content, including how the content will be repurposed and amplified in social media channels.The editorial calendar should contain a list of all content approved for publication. It should address the questions: how much content, how often, and specifically when it will publish. It includes content requirements, responsibilities and a schedule.Source of editorial calendar example: http://www.findandconvert.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/editorial-calendar-sample.png
Social graph -- Search is getting increasingly dependent on social graph - content is increasingly showing up in social networks. Talk about how this is evolving - it's a moving target, but it's up to these guys to develop policies. This is already happening and will continue to grow in the future.