This document provides an overview of content marketing and inbound marketing strategies. It discusses how traditional marketing uses interruptive tactics like ads while inbound marketing focuses on creating helpful content over time. It emphasizes using data to inform strategy and creating content like blogs, videos and social media posts to attract potential customers. The document also covers best practices for writing content, optimizing it for search engines, and distributing it across channels to generate leads and traffic.

1. Content Marketing
What, Why and How to
Kick Butt at It
Shelly Kramer, @shellykramer
© 2013 V3 Integrated Marketing

2. What is Inbound Marketing?
How to Start Your Initiatives by
Gathering and Using Data
Why Social, SEO + Content are Key
Where to Start
How to Write Effective Content
Some things we’ll cover include:
How to Distribute Content Across the Web
The Importance of Tracking and Reporting

3. Marketing Today? Complicadio.

4. What We’re Used To
Traditional Marketing = Push Messaging
Display Ads
Direct Mail
TV + Radio
Yellow Pages
Cold Calling
Email Blast
Trade Shows
Traditional Marketing is Interruption

5. Old Way: Money x Media = Business
New Way: Time x Media = Business
The Formula Has Changed

6. What is Content Marketing?
Blogging
Webinars
Video + Podcasting
Case Studies, White Papers
Email Marketing
Flickr, Instagram
Social (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
Tumblr, Scoop.It, Paper.li, Storify, etc.
And all of this is part of Content Marketing. And
collectively, using these tactics is called
“Inbound Marketing”

7. Inbound Marketing Drives Business
But you have to feed the inbound
marketing machine. Great content
is how you do that.

8. Great Content is Like Breadcrumbs
(super delicioso breadcrumbs)
Inbound marketing is the process of
creating and spreading breadcrumbs on
the Internet and hoping people will pick
them up. Those breadcrumbs are
designed to lead them “home” -- to your
website, blog, landing page, Facebook
page, etc. – wherever it is you want
them to end up.

9. Inbound = Bees to Honey

10. Engaging in Social Channels = Marketing

11. Technique Effectiveness Rating

12. High Growth vs. Average Firms

13. What Do High Growth Companies
Find Most Effective?
SEO
Creating Content (Blogging)
Focus on Data
Email Marketing
Creating More Content
(whitepapers, eBooks,
newsletters, case studies)
Social Media Channels

14. Why Inbound?
Inbound marketing generates
more leads for longer
periods of time than
traditional marketing.

15. Example:
Display ad in local
business journal
runs once,
exposure to people
reading the paper
that week

16. Blog Post, White
Paper, Case
Study
These marketing
resources live on
your website and,
properly optimized
and marketed, can
attract leads for a
long time to come.

17. Blog + Social + SEO Deliver Lower
Cost Per Lead

18. You don’t start with social or with
content. If you do, you will lose.

19. Start with data.
Information is power.

20. Start With Competitive Analysis
What are we doing?
What are our competitors doing?
What kind of content are they
creating?
Where do we have opportunities?
Where do we suck?
What can we realistically handle?

21. Our Prospects + Social
Who are our prospects?
What are they doing?
Where do they hang out?
What do they talk about?
What language do they use?
What do they need?
How can we serve them?

22. What Does Your Data Show?
How many web visits per day/wk/mo?
What % of traffic is unique vs. return?
What keywords bring them to your site?
What content brings them to your site?
What are they doing there?
What sites refer them to your site?

23. Let Strategy Drive Tactics
• Personas. Who are our customers?
• What problems do they have that we
can solve?
• What products or services do they
need?
• How do they talk about them?
• Where are they online? When are they
online?

24. Let Strategy Drive Tactics
• How can we most effectively
reach our target audience?
• What will our strategy be--what
can we deliver of value?
• How can we capture leads?
• What does success look like?
• How will we measure our
progress?

25. Let’s Talk About Writing.
Effective content is powerful.

26. Understand How SEO Works

27. To Write Effectively for the Web,
Know This ….

28. What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization
Or, the art of helping Google figure out
what you’re talking about.

29. The Key to Good SEO?
People.
Ask yourself just one question: Is it
good for people?
If it is, it’s good for SEO.

30. Why Do Keywords Matter?
Keywords are bite-sized
chunks of information that
tell the search engines what
your content is about.

31. Links Are Internet Gold
Links help search engines
determine the trust and
authority your domain has
due to the quality of incoming
links.
The more incoming links your
site has, the more valuable it
is in Google’s eyes.

32. Why Is This?
It’s Simple.
What people say about you is
more important (and viewed
as more credible) than what
you say about yourself.
• That’s kind of a no-brainer, right?

33. Context is Critical
Google Has Wised Up
SEO wizards have been manipulating links
to impact search results. Google’s latest
algorithm changes focus less on links
and more on context.
Translated: relevant content will rule.

34. Let’s Get Really Geeky
Behavior on site, behavior off site.
What they do matters. What that
means about the relevancy of your
content. What that tells search
engines. Freaky!

35. Why Link Out When Writing
Linking is the Fundamental
Basis of the Web
Search engines want to know
you’re “connected” and linking
out is as important as
incoming links, from a
credibility standpoint.

36. How to Link Out
• Link out to relevant content early in the body copy
• Link to relevant pages approximately every 120 words of
content
• Link under phrases, not single words
• Link to relevant interior pages of your site or other sites
• Link with naturally relevant anchor text
• The key? Again, it’s simple. It’s all about people. Focus on
the fundamentals of what search engines are looking for –
serving up relevant results to those searchers, who are
people.

37. How Do We Get Links?
The Power of Social Channels
Sharing great content on a regular basis
gets you noticed. You become regarded
as an authority. People then create
other content and link to your content …
that’s the magic of relevant link
building.

38. How to Write Great Content
Step 1: Remove

39. How to Write Great Blog Content
Ditch corporate speak
Use contractions
Write like people talk
Dumb it down
Don’t be cute, Don’t be mean
Write for the audience
Make it scannable
Minimum of 300 words
Maximum of 600 words

40. Writing for the Web is Different
(But ridiculously easy, too)
Be interesting, helpful, relevant,
timely or funny
Use keywords that make sense
Write a great headline, using the
right keywords
Sell it in the first paragraph

41. Post Titles
Keep your title under 60 characters.
This ensures the full title is visible in a
search, increasing the likelihood of a
click-thru.
8:10 vs. 2:10

42. Meta Descriptions
Tell Search Engines What Your Post
is About
Keep your Meta description under 165
characters so the full description is
visible as a search result

43. But Wait, I’m a Purist
Don’t want to SEO your posts because
you’re writing for your readers?
<GMAB>
Using smart SEO makes it easier for
them and gives you better odds that
they’ll read your content.

44. Titles and Meta Descriptions

45. Ramble vs. SEO Focus
I Am Unorganized
Ramble, ramble ramble, ramble, ramble for
300 more words (and they’re already
gone) then get to the point of the post
Productivity Tools for Small Businesses
The best productivity tools for small
businesses make life easier. Our
favorites include PaySimple, Freshbooks
and Kapost.

46. Don’t Dance Around, Sell It

47. Be Smart, Repurpose Content
Create video, upload to YouTube
Write blog post, embed video
Feature guest blog, republished with attribution
Guest blog somewhere else, Google Authorship
Create a presentation
Presentation uploaded to SlideShare
Write blog post, embed SlideShare preso
Write for your corporate blog or
nag your company to start a blog and contribute to it)

48. Engaging in Social Media Channels = Marketing

49. How These Channels Drive Business
Reporting is critical.

50. Install Analytics, Then LOOK at Them

51. Try Tynt, It’s Pretty Awesome

52. Know Where Your Stuff Goes

53. WordPress? All-in-One SEO Pack

54. Blogging Drives Traffic

55. Data Drives Strategy

57. Blogging Drives Traffic

58. Be Strategic About Where and How
You Share Content

59. A Good Editorial Calendar Will Save Your Sanity

60. Build
relationships
before you need
them.

61. Remember
WRITING great content is the easy part.
Getting people to read it is the hard
part. And getting them to share it (or to
do something else for you) is equally
as difficult. Unless you invest in
making friends. First.

62. Ways to Measure Success
Shares of Blog Content/Blog Subscribers
Growing Friend/Follower Base Across Channels
Most Popular Blog Posts/Tweets
Blog Comments/Action on Blog for Branded Campaign
Website Traffic, Facebook Insights
LinkedIn Company Followers/Connection Requests
G+ Followers + Circles
Success Stories + Testimonials
Truth: Your Analytics Are Your Roadmap. Use them
to help drive your brand strategy in content +
social efforts.

63. Other Ways to Measure Success
Ability to Drive Social Conversions
Getting Your Readers and Site Visitors to DO Something
Improved Brand Reputation
Greater “Share of Voice”
More Leads + Opportunities/Increased Revenue
The Web changes everything about business.
And when you understand how to create
great content, you’ve got an edge.

64. Stalk Me, Anytime
Shelly@V3im.com816.200.2520
LinkedIn
Shelly DeMotte Kramertwitter.com/shellykramer facebook.com/shellykramer
www.v3im.com