The 1 Key to Successful Content Marketing
Most content marketing efforts fail and it usually isn’t pretty.
Companies can spend tons of budget and time on creating beautiful content.
They toil for months, then post it on Facebook…and wait.
Nothing happens.
You can’t be faulted if at this point you think “content marketing is a waste of time”.
It is if that’s how you do it.
Here’s the one key to success in content marketing:
**Know who you’re going to promote the content to BEFORE you create the content**
Too often, companies create content for the sake of creating it.
Is it any wonder that a “fire, aim, ready” strategy isn’t working?
Here’s a case study on how we took a lowly infographic, and ended up
with:
-a dedicated article in Mashable (PR)
-an extremely valuable backlink from Mashable (SEO)
-over 1,300 social shares (viral and social media)
-a top ranking on Google (SEO)
Is your infographic getting those results?
If not, keep reading!
Here’s a case study on how we took a lowly infographic, and ended up
with:
-a dedicated article in Mashable (PR)
-an extremely valuable backlink from Mashable (SEO)
-over 1,300 social shares (viral and social media)
-a top ranking on Google (SEO)
Our client was a software company for human resources.
1. Find a Hot Topic – Newsjacking
At that time, one of the top stories in the news was that Yahoo had
just hired a new CEO: Marissa Mayer.
When she came in, one of the first things she did was change the HR
policy: no longer were employees allowed to work remotely.
This caused quite an uproar.
Almost every news site was talking about it, debating its pros and cons.
Using our Step 4 in Firecracker’s “Ignites” strategy–Newsjacking–we
took advantage of a trending topic.
Newjacking is simply finding a hot news item, and finding a way to
leverage it.
In our case, we wanted to create an infographic around the subject.
2. Research Who Reports on this News
Prior to doing a single thing in creating the infographic, we put our
PR hats on and did some research.
Using a combination of media databases, social media and Google,
we identified a list of reporters and bloggers who wrote about
telecommuting.
We made a list and found their email addresses and social media handles.
3. Determine the Probability for Success
Based on the list we had created, and the articles they had written,
we then assessed our chances for success.
PR and content marketing aren’t guaranteed successful results.
But you can “stack the deck” so you maximize your odds for success.
That’s just what we did. We found a hot news topic. We identified the
reporters who write on the topic.
Based on this, we determined our chances were good.
All systems were go.
4. Create the Infographic
Believe it or not, this was the easy part.
As I’ve mentioned previously, only 20% of your effort should be on
content creation.
80% of your effort should be on researching and promoting the
content.
Using publicly available statistics, we put together a Word document
of brainstorming items.
From there, we grouped them into similar themes.
Then we took a red pen and edited it down to something manageable.
The actual graphic design of the infographic was done by an outsourced
designer. We gave him creative direction and themes, and he put
together a pretty decent (though not awesome) infographic.
Remember: a relevant topic and statistics will trump a pretty looking
infographic any day.
5. Promote, Promote, Promote
The infographic was done.
It was placed on our client’s website, with social sharing buttons up
and SEO tags (title and description) created.
Now came the fun part of PR outreach.
We personally emailed each reporter and blogger one by one.
No mass emails using Constant Contact.
Through persistent emails and follow ups, we got a nice long Mashable article out of it.
6. Measure Results
The results were awesome from that one article alone:
-Because Mashable has such high trust and authority in the eyes of
Google, that article itself ended up ranking #2 overall on Google for the
search term “telecommuter infographic”.
-The reporter of the article gave credit to my client and a nice juicy link
to my client’s webpage where we had put up the infographic. For those
who know anything about SEO, high quality backlinks is one of the top
factors for success. And it doesn’t get much better than a Mashable link.
-The Mashable article itself had over 1,300 social shares!
-Because of that link, my client’s webpage where the infographic lived
ranked #1 for “telecommuter infographic”, even higher than Mashable.
-Also because of that link, the infographic was the first result on Google
Images as well.
Now that’s what I call a successful content marketing campaign.
So next time before you even start creating content, remember the key
to success:
Know who you’re going to promote the content to before you spend
even one second on design.
Doing so can be the difference between zero and hero.
Need an integrated public relations and content marketing strategy that
can help you crush search engines? Contact Firecracker PR today.