for startups

content marketing for startups

A BLUEPRINT TO GET STARTED RIGHT

(plus startup examples & hacks)

About Growth Guides

Less reading. More doing. This guide contains:

Specific steps you can follow to execute faster and better.

Eric Ries defines a startup as a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Dave McClure says that startups are companies that are confused about their products, their customers, and their ability to make money. Needless to say, regardless of how you define a startup, this stuff’s hard! And no one out to build the next big thing really has time to sit back and pontificate along with topical thought leaders out there. So we skipped the pontificating. This Growth Guides was created to help young startups actually execute. It was built as a tactical playbook or blueprint to get off to the best start possible start.

Real examples from entrepreneurs who have found success in a particular area.

Hacks and shortcuts, since building a startup isn’t always ever sexy. Look for this icon throughout the playbook

Our goal in creating this resource is to help you get more done. We make strong recommendations for how, exactly, one can execute, with the belief and understanding that it’s better to be done than perfect as you launch and iterate on your startup.

DISCLAIMER: This guide is not intended to help you perform research into a topic, tactic, or technology. In order to focus on execution, we’ve assumed a certain level of understanding and personal or company buy-in. This is also not to be viewed as a silver bullet that, if followed verbatim, will lead to all the results you need. Instead, this guide should be used to get off to a great start and find initial traction – that’s the role of our firm AND our content.

About NextView Ventures NextView Ventures is a seed-stage VC investing in internet and mobile startups in primarily Boston and New York. Co-founders and partners Rob Go (eBay, Spark Capital), David Beisel (About.com, Venrock), and Lee Hower (PayPal, LinkedIn) focus exclusively on seed in order to better fulfill the firm’s mission, which is also the mission of this guide: Help founders get off to the best possible start. Follow the team on Twitter: Co-founders and General Partners: David Beisel | Rob Go | Lee Hower Director, Platform and Community: Jay Acunzo

2

Table of Contents Section 1: The Theory

4

Why Content Marketing Matters

5

How to Think About Content

7

Section 2: Setting Up Infrastructure

9

Buyer Personas

12

Your Central Story & Blog

14

Content Topics & Idea Generation

16

Editorial Calendar & Outreach List

19

Section 3: The Playbook

23

Creating a Core Resource

26

Editing Cheat-Sheet

30

Blogging Strategy

32

Distribution & Marketing

37

3

The Theory 4

Why Content Marketing Matters Today A Quick Look at the Theory Behind the Trend

The theory behind content marketing centers on one core idea: Today’s consumer has all the power. Three trends caused this, which developed over time but really accelerated in the last 20 or so years: 1. The Explosion of Information and Media: CNN estimated in 2011 that over 417 web pages existed for every single internet user – to say nothing of all the individual stimuli appearing on each web page. Thanks to a lowered barrier to entry to publish and an increase in global internet usage, media (both social and corporate) exploded to heights never before imagined. As Google’s Eric Schmidt likes to point out, the same amount of information created from the dawn of humanity through 2003 is today replicated every 48 hours. “Noise” is an understatement. 2. A History of Brand Interruption and Deception: Marketers have long needed to beg, borrow, steal, and shout their way into the lives of consumers. Brand advertising, once a way to notify those around you of a useful product or service, has long since escalated into an arms race for our attention thanks to increased competition in every business category, as well as a huge amount of communication channels for brands to infiltrate. Given a centuries-old track record of sensationalism, interruption, and bait-and-switch tactics, when a brand appears to a consumer, there’s increasing temptation (and ability) to navigate around it. 3. The Rapid Rate of Change in Technology: As is old news to any startup, the number of new tech companies and products created each year continues to skyrocket. Many of these technologies have empowered the masses to both publish content (contributing to trend #1 to the left) and take control to navigate around anything interruptive or unwelcome, like ads (think DVRs).

5

The result? More options and information than the human brain can seemingly handle, along with the ability to move freely and easily between all these billions of stimuli. Thus, we as consumers won’t and don’t dedicate attention to anything we don’t actively and voluntarily wish to consume. And this forever changes how we research, shop, and buy. All this to say, the most important important idea in the world of marketing today is now this:

CHOICE The importance of this concept simply can not be overstated. If your marketing is what consumers actively choose – instead of what interrupts what they choose, which is increasingly ineffective – then you stand to gain their attention long enough to convince, convert, and delight your target buyer. So why does content matter?

The defining characteristic of content is choice.

INDUSTRY TRENDS

B2B Companies

B2C Companies

Content Marketing Adoption

93%

90%

Traffic, Sales, Lead Quality, Social Sharing

Traffic, Social Sharing, Time Spent on Site

30% (58%)

24% (60%)

44%

49%

Most Important Metrics

Budget Allocation (Plans to Increase in 2014) Outsource Some Component of Content Marketing

Sources: Content Marketing Institute; HubSpot; MarketingProfs

6

How to Think About Content Marketing Your unfair advantage.

Content marketing is an approach to marketing – not a single tactic – and startups have an unfair advantage adopting it: You’re building a product to solve a problem you’ve identified for the buyer. It’s that exact problem (and overarching mission) that your content should aim to address every time.

We’re preaching to the choir here, but at a startup, there are tons of potential distractions. And since the act of creating content can be a bit loose at times, here’s a helpful way to define content marketing for early-stage startups: Attracting qualified traffic by continually creating content that helps your audience execute better or align with your mission. To unpack that quickly: ◉◉ QUALIFIED traffic – not just the most possible page views. You’re selling a product, not advertising space (typically). If the Huffington Post drove just a few hundred visitors a day, someone’s getting fired. A few hundred visitors to your site on a daily basis can bring tremendous value, if they’re the right visitors. Later, we’ll talk about identifying and attracting the right visitor, aka your buyer persona. ◉◉ CONTINUALLY create content. As we just established, you’re not actually a publisher, so this can be really hard. The trick is to follow a process that you refine over time and to use a core piece to spawn tons more content. In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up some basic infrastructure and follow a tight process that makes publishing easier to sustain and scale. ◉◉ HELP your audience. Your content can help them either (1) execute better (i.e. solve a problem) or (2) think or feel differently (i.e. the way you and your startup view the world, aligning them with your mission and increasing the odds that they actually sign up, buy, and/or share your work). By the end of this playbook, you’ll see how building successful products and creating content that grows audiences are perfectly aligned and achieve similar goals. 7

How to Think About Content Marketing The “Oh by the Way” Moment Great content marketing aims to serve your audience in a way that’s strikingly similar to your product or service. Because of this relationship, there exists this “oh by the way” moment to your content. Essentially, your audience will consume what you create to solve their problems or think and feel a certain way, but – oh by the way – the very BEST way to solve that problem and feel that way is actually to buy your product or service.

Example Startup:

Content Helps You:

Oh By The Way...

Do more with video as a business

Wistia is a video marketing platform built specifically for businesses (not cats).

Maximize revenue and price products properly

Price Intelligently helps companies communicate value and set smarter prices to capture more revenue.

Manage sales and marketing better using data

InsightSquared delivers powerfully simple business analytics for companies of any size.

(Disclosure: NextView is an investor in InsightSquared.)

8

Infrastructure

9

Getting Started When in doubt, start.

This guide subscribes to the belief that it’s better to make positive progress than to analyze every single way something can be done. As a result, the following pages make strong recommendations, but we acknowledge that there are other ways to execute a given tactic or strategy.

So much to do, so little time, so few resources. To make it easy on anyone at an early-stage startup, we’ve broken this playbook into two distinct groups of activities, each with specific steps, advice, and/or hacks to execute: 1. Setting up a startup-friendly amount of infrastructure (to give yourself some help and sustain things). 2. Producing and distributing your content (without needing the brand awareness – or budget – of a Red Bull).

Your Visual Playbook Looking for a “secret” to this stuff? Like anything in life, there really isn’t one, but committing to this playbook is the next best thing. Using a focused, step-by-step process can mean the difference between growing a loyal, business-sustaining audience…or writing about a company trip nobody else cares about as your latest blog post (publish date: March 2012). There’s a better way if you want to see actual, tangible results.

10

Your Visual Playbook Goal: __________ Measured by: __________

Blogging & “Atomizing”

Email & Social

Core Resource Paid Promotion

Buyer One Simple Persona Story

Central Hub

Partnerships & Syndication

Funnel Focus

Idea Pipeline

Editorial Calendar

Outreach List

supporting infrastructure We’ll walk piece by piece through the above visual so that by the end, it becomes more intuitive. We’ll begin with that supporting layer of infrastructure (from left to right): Buyer personas, your unique story, your content’s home base, a basic understanding of the marketing funnel, an idea pipeline, an editorial calendar, and a third-party outreach list. The entire playbook hinges on the items in blue. 11

1. Create Your Buyer Persona This might be THE MOST important piece of the content marketing puzzle – do not skip this! A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer, built using real facts like demographic, psychographic, and some anecdotal information, as well as a few educated assumptions. Personas help you focus. After all, it’s impossible to attract the right audience – especially in today’s noisy world – without knowing who they are or how your content can add value to their lives. Even details about their person (not just job function) such as “stressed out” can make all the difference. (Short, visual, and productivity-focused content helps a stressful person, regardless of the product or mission you’re selling. See? Details matter.) Personas help you resonate with the right audience, not just the biggest group. Your business model is different than a publisher. You need highly qualified traffic, not just any page views. A Sneaky Approach to Marketing Personas sound a lot like product-market fit. However, as a startup, not yet having product-market fit does NOT preclude you from building an audience. Remember, content allows you to own attention (views, subscribers, etc.), not borrow it (paid advertising). If you understand the problem you wish to solve with your product, then you’re ready to execute your content marketing even before your product is ready. You can then use that audience to perform customer development, test and launch features, close deals, and/or spread your mission through social and word-of-mouth. It’s way easier to launch when others already pay attention to you. Building a “Minimal Viable Persona” Experts prescribe approaches that take lots of time and energy in order to develop a fully-formed persona. While it’s absolutely worth it eventually (as recommended here and here), you might be under pressure to deliver some sort of proof that content marketing can work for your startup – not to mention all the other things you have to get done. So, yes, it’s possible to hack this. Note: We’re NOT recommending you cut corners finding real product-market fit. We are, however, suggesting that a viable content strategy can be launched with a rough idea of a persona, which you then hone over time as you learn.

12

Sample Questions to Ask Customers Talking to customers is the quickest way to develop a basic persona. Contact your most loyal customers, beta users, or target users to let them know you’re planning to create resources that make their lives easier and that you’d like to ask them some quick questions. (A side benefit if they reply: You can send them the content later, thus earning a potentially loyal audience member to consume and share your work.) Some example questions to ask yourself or your buyers: 1. Determine their job level: Are they decision makers or merely influencers? 2. What are their goals at work? In life? 3. What are some challenges they face trying to achieve those goals? 4. A sk them to walk you through the time they recognized they needed a solution like yours. What was the problem they were looking to solve? Why did they pick your solution? How has it solved their problem? 5. Switching gears, how do they gather information when looking for solutions? When looking for entertainment? Ask about their media consumption. The next thing you need to nail down is the core story that ties together every piece you create. The simplest framework is what we’re calling your “One Simple Story” (which is an extrapolation of a brand’s “one simple thing”). Coke’s “one simple thing” at the time of this writing is happiness, and Zipcar’s is freedom, for example.

HACK THIS!

Basic Persona Template: Example Erica

3 Ways to Describe Her

Tech Savvy

Pressed for time & resources

Young & hungry

3 Relevant Challenges She Faces

Needs to drive more leads

Knowing where to start

Must sell ideas to boss

3 Resulting Content Types

“Insider” tools & tricks

Short but directional

Data- & ROI-driven

(Read vertically, the resulting content type should be informed by the two phrases above it. For example, someone pressed for time without knowing where to start their work needs short but instructional content. Long, textheavy documents would only add stress. Thus, this exercise helps you hone both an idea of your audience and roughly what to create for them.)

2. Determine Your Story How to Craft a Consistent Story That Resonates Most stories can be distilled into a very simple framework, delivered from the point of view of your target persona: Their status quo, some drama, and a resolution. You’ll see this pattern in even the most basic stories (in other words, this doesn’t have to be Shakespeare): The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout (status quo). Down came the rain and washed the spider out (drama). Out came the sun and dried up all the rain (resolution). As a marketer, think about your persona’s reality and biggest challenges. For instance, HubSpot, which sells inbound marketing software, tells this story: Every marketer used to execute with the same playbook (status quo). But in the digital era, that playbook is broken, and customers have become annoyed at marketing (drama). Thus, inbound marketing lets you create marketing people actually love and respond to today (resolution). Note: The resolution section is what makes you unique. You believe that a certain type of resolution is the right one, as evidenced by your unique product. Remember the “Oh By The Way” Moment? Your story – at least thematically – should be conveyed in every piece. Just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t mean a given reader has. In each case, the resolution should lead to that “oh by the way” moment discussed earlier – whether it’s, “Oh by the way, the best resolution is to take one more step and download this next piece of content,” or, “subscribe,” or, “buy our product. You should tell this story so much as to own it, but the trick is to do so from a single hub that becomes known for that story. That hub, which is your home base to which you’ll drive traffic, is your blog. 14

3. Four Tips for Blog Setup 1. Use simple, clear language to convey the benefits of the blog to your specific persona. (This holds true whether or not you give the blog a separate name.)

3. Make it crystal clear where readers can subscribe. Building your email list is critical for any startup, which we’ll discuss more later.

2. Place the most critical one or two calls-toaction visibly around your blog’s feed. (Note: If you go with one, make it an offer to download more content. If you pick two, it’s okay if one focuses on your product.)

4. ALWAYS provide links to pages about you and your product (Demo, Pricing, About, etc.).

15

4. Pick Your Topic of Focus As a startup looking for early traction (whether in beta users or actual paying customers), you should start with topics that are just one step “removed” from your product. In other words, while you shouldn’t write about the product itself, address the specific problems your product also solves, rather than chasing page views and writing about big, broad, popular themes. This is best explained with an example. Let’s take Directr, a Boston-based startup (Disclosure: NextView is an investor). Directr’s app helps companies create better videos. If you imagined all the relevant topics they could address into a marketing funnel, where the broad top of the funnel signified lots of people, it’d look like this: While there are lots more people who care about “content marketing” than “creating Topic = Content Marketing in General video for business,” Directr should focus their limited resources on owning that niche at the Topic = Video bottom. Those who are interested in that topic are Marketing in General much more likely to convert soon – they’re more qualified visitors – compared to those who are in the ballpark of content marketing in general. That crowd not only has way more options to read and consume content all Topic = Creating about a broad topic, they may never need or care to learn about Video for Business Directr’s specific solution. Even if they eventually do need Directr, they would require much more marketing and lots more attention and convincing from Directr – which means marketing infrastructure and resources a small startup probably lacks. This is the trade-off you’re making: Go for lots of views (along with many others writing about the same thing) and hope some of your traffic will be qualified, or start laser-focused on people who self-qualify by reading about a similar topic that’s tightly linked to your actual product. Our advice? Start at the bottom. Own a niche. 16

5. Open an Idea Pipeline This is the simplest but most powerful tool you can use. An idea pipeline is an app that syncs on mobile and desktop that contains all your ideas for content: Half-baked paragraphs, working headlines, data points you found, links that inspire a post, curated graphics or videos to embed and write about, etc. Whenever ideas strike, whether as you brainstorm or at random, SAVE THEM SOMEWHERE. Never try to come up with content from scratch every day. That’s an easy way to go dark. Trello, Evernote, and Google Drive are all examples of free apps that can serve as your idea pipeline. Inside the app, you’ll want to create two halves: 1. A repository of single post ideas. Typically, each note or cell here will contain drafts of headlines with any other context alongside it. One note equals one post. 2. A list of series or templates you can repurpose again and again to fill gaps between unique ideas. A classic example is to answer customer questions. Curated link roundups also apply. (For a great startup example, check out Whiteboard Fridays from Moz.)

HACK THIS!

Filling Your Idea Pipeline

We’ll review an efficient way to brainstorm later in this guide, but here are some common ways to fill your idea pipeline: 1. List common customer questions (knowledge-based, not product-based). 2. Create a Feedly account or other RSS subscription of related blogs. Save relevant links into your idea pipeline to do response pieces or similar posts but with a strong, unique angle later. 3. List out interesting people you’d like to interview. If they agree, email them a few questions to make it easy. (They’ll likely share your final post, increasing your exposure and audience. This is a proven way to boost traffic.) 4. List out things you disagree with that receive attention today: industry trends, popular opinion, or other tropes. Negate them to support your company’s POV (e.g. Why X Is Broken And What To Do Instead). 5. Curate inspirational quotes or stats. (ProTip: Use ClickToTweet to make sharing these things easier for readers.) 6. Monitor industry news and either react quickly to them (a great way to grow traffic) or wait a day and do a very thoughtful “What It Means” piece. 17

Startup Interview: GrabCAD The Importance of Owning a Niche Contributed by:

GrabCAD operates an online community of over 1.25 million mechanical engineers (out of a total that’s estimated between 3 and 4 million globally). They create content to engage, educate, and grow this community. What types of content does GrabCAD regularly produce? We use our blog to share content in three areas: 1. News about the Community, like Challenges and interviews with engineers. 2. Information about GrabCAD and its products, like feature announcements. 3. Articles to help professional engineers do their jobs, like a recent post on popular mobile apps for mechanical engineers. We’ve also done several webinars, including one with a well-known CAD blogger, and we’ll continue to do a webinar every few months. We haven’t done any podcasts yet, and our infographics are rare – we did one to commemorate our 1 millionth member a few months ago. Finally, we experimented with “Content 1.0” - our CEO [Hardi Meybaum] wrote a book. It’s called The Art of Product Design: Changing How Things Get Made and tells the story of how mechanical engineering is changing, told from Hardi’s unique perspective.

Rob Stevens

VP, Marketing & Business Development @robgstevens

grabcad.com Tools and a thriving community to help engineers develop products faster. @GrabCAD /GrabCAD

What have you learned building your community that other startups can adopt when building their own audiences? We’ve been successful by focusing on a specific niche, meeting a specific need for that niche, and then staying out of the way. We view our role in the community as facilitators and moderators, and we never fool ourselves that we “own” the community. People come to GrabCAD’s community because of the amazing CAD models members have created and shared and because of the willingness of those members to help each other. So I guess my advice would be to find a way to let people help each other, then let them do it. A recent product update for the company led to a shift in focus for your blog content, from “cool stuff for engineers” to more helpful content, with tips, tricks, and other resources. Why the change, and how has it gone for GrabCAD? A year ago we were primarily known for our free Community, but since then, we’ve introduced our paid Workbench product, which helps engineers manage and share CAD models. As a result, we’ve focused more on helping practicing engineers. While we still write about Community topics, we do more pieces on managing CAD files, finding useful online resources, and so on. This hasn’t been easy - the challenges our users face are technical and detailed, and writing about them requires a fair degree of subject matter expertise. Fortunately, we have a number of folks at GrabCAD with decades of experience in the CAD industry, and we draw on outside experts from time to time as well.

(Disclosure: NextView is an investor in GrabCAD.)

18

6. Open an Editorial Calendar The last writer-friendly app you need is an editorial calendar, or “ed cal.” This can be a spreadsheet or simply Google Calendar. Software solutions like Kapost, Newscred, Skyword, and others also offer scheduled publishing, but as a startup, you can do a lot for free: 1. Create a new Google Calendar titled “Editorial Calendar.” 2. I nvite everyone in your company. The more people viewing it, the more you’re held accountable, which is a great thing. You at least want marketing and sales to know about it. 3. Create an invite on the date and time you plan to publish each post. (Speaking very broadly, the best times to publish are earlier in the week at 9am and 12pm – the former is the East Coast’s commute, and the latter is the West Coast’s commute and the East Coast’s lunch break.) 4. Name each invite with the title of your post. 5. Paste the URL of the post into the notes section of the calendar invite so that anybody can find it or refer back to it later. At the end of the month, you’ll use the calendar to report back on how productive you’ve been. It’s much easier than scrolling through your blog or CMS and peering into specific dates and times a post went live. Thus, your ed cal not only serves to keep you honest and help you hit specific productivity goals, it helps you look back, analyze, and tweak your schedule accordingly. NOTE: The ed cal is perhaps the easiest part of this setup process to skip. It feels like unnecessary tracking. But in speaking to tens of bloggers and content marketers in creating this guide, many lament not opening an ed cal sooner. So, if for nothing else than retrospective understanding of your own work, don’t skip this step.

19

7. Create an Outreach List Open a Google spreadsheet and create six tabs: ◉◉ ◉◉ ◉◉ ◉◉ ◉◉

Your best customers/users Your investors, advisors, mentors, and similar contacts Individual influencers in your industry Journalists that cover your industry Companies with whom you could partner

Leveraging This List If you plan to reach out to companies, do so before you create a piece of content. By agreeing to co-brand and/or co-promote something, you can tap into each others’ audiences. This is a great strategy for anyone just getting started – early on, offer your expertise and the fact that you’ll do the creation. Down the road, once you have an audience and a bigger email list, you’ll have a stronger case to make to even larger companies. If you plan to use the list for influencer or individual outreach and content sharing, focus on those who are one “rung” above you. It’s true you want to write about the biggest names in your space (because it attracts audience), but it’s far better to spend time during your outreach on someone who may actually reply.

20

As an early-stage startup, you need to do things that don’t scale to grow, including influencer outreach. Check out the types of content they’re creating and sharing already, and try to frame your content as well-aligned with their point of view. This makes your intro much easier – something like this: ◉◉ Open with something that establishes your alignment. (Example: “I read your latest post, XYZ, and I couldn’t agree more, particularly on ABC detail.”) ◉◉ Share your content without a strong call to action. (“Just wanted to share the link to X. Obviously I value your opinion so any feedback is appreciated, but I also felt this aligned with your latest piece, and you might find it interesting.”) This section is absolutely for the purpose of stroking their ego. We’re all human, after all. ◉◉ Ask in a subtle way for them to check out and share your content, but treat it like a cocktail party not sales pitch. (“Any social sharing would be great, and we’re always glad to feature your work to our audience and customers. Let me know if we can ever help you!”) ◉◉ Thank them for all they do to advance the mission or beliefs you both share.

21

Startup Interview: Boundless Producing Long-Form Content Using Freelance Experts Contributed by:

Boundless relies on a network of freelance subject matter experts to create, vet, and curate entire educational textbooks for 20+ subjects, reaching over 3 million people globally. Startups can struggle to hire freelancers. Did Boundless? We used a few channels to identify our freelancers, which we call “edcurators” to instill a sense of community, including: personal connections (many on our team have advanced degrees and professional relationships with academics), academic journals, and good old fashioned Craigslist. We built an automated resume drop that we use to filter people based on their subject matter expertise and likely fit for our community. Once we’ve identified someone that is a likely fit, we screen the candidate on Skype to make a personal connection. A lot comes out face-to-face that doesn’t by email or on the phone. After that, we have a test that we developed to evaluate the candidate’s competencies in their subject as well as their writing skills. Once they clear that gate, we have an onboarding document to get them up to speed on our processes and CMS that of course is read on our app. We eat our own dog food. How do you ensure the quality of a freelancer’s work? We have a peer-review process to vet the initial content submission, and then if it passes, it is reviewed by a full-time staff member or sent back to the original writer for rework. All of our content is touched at least three times before reaching a student. We also leverage our readers to help improve our content. We’ve had nearly tens of thousands of content “bug” submissions. We try to respond within a week to fix those.

Nick Ducoff

VP, Content & Operations @nickducoff

boundless.com Textbook alternatives to save students money and help them learn more effectively. @GoBoundless /GoBoundless

What systems or processes emerged based on your early work with freelancers that help you move faster today? We built our style guide into the guide rails of our CMS. This makes it so that the content comes out reading as if it were written by one author, while in reality it is a patchwork of dozens of them. We are in the process of refashioning our CMS, which was a back-end tool we built ourselves for internal use, into our consumer-facing site. Soon, all of our millions of monthly readers will be able to write and edit content on our site in a beautiful WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) experience. We’re constantly learning and folding those learnings back into the product.

See an Example at Boundless.com/Biology

22

The Playbook 23

DID YOU SKIP ANYTHING? Content marketing is about consistency, not virality. Many startups publish a handful of blog posts before going completely dark without seeing results. Sustaining your production and distribution can be difficult, so following each step listed on the previous pages can enable greater speed and better results.

PRODUCTION + DISTRIBUTION

1. Determine Your Goal Grow Email List Measured by: Unique Subscribers Goal: __________ __________


Email & Social



In picking a set goal, you’re really describing the single action you want readers to take when they encounter your content. Without a goal, you-’ll have no idea what to produce and how to distribute it. If you’re not sure where to start, focus on growing your email list first. It is the most important asset a content marketer can own today. (We’ll discuss this more later on its own dedicated page – it’s that critical.) 24

“How Should I Measure My Content?” In every interaction a reader has with your content, you should be telling them what’s next – subscribe, download, share, and so on. These calls-to-action are the difference between some nice view metrics or time spent on site and tangible ROI. Also, different types of content are built to do different things on the web based on how audiences interact with them. A SlideShare is great for views and shares, but not leads. If the goal is leads, then the only reason to create a SlideShare is to drive clicks from within the slides over to a landing page where people can subscribe to download more content. Otherwise, creating that SlideShare, while it might be nice for exposure, doesn’t help you achieve your goal. With that in mind, consider measuring your content based on two groups of metrics: User Indicators: publisher metrics like views, unique visitors, time spent, bounce rate, and sharing – all of which help achieve your… Business Objectives: your primary goals, like subscribers, app adoption, or sales leads Unless your business model is the same as a publisher site, user indicators must serve your business objectives. Generating a lot of shares, for instance, is only great if those shares lead back to more site traffic…and site traffic only matters if it’s the right traffic (your buyer persona or someone who influences that persona)…and the right traffic only matters if they then convert in some way, such as joining your email list, which is your core goal in the example above. So, study and tweak user indicators, but obsess over business objectives.

25

2. Create a Core Resource Grow Email List Measured by: Unique Subscribers Goal: __________ __________


Email & Social



This resource will serve as the central point to every single thing you do in this marketing playbook. It will take the most time to create out of any single piece but, once created, it makes the rest of your content production much, much easier. Here’s what you need to know: 1. It should directly contribute to your main goal. Using the example of the SlideShare on the previous page, you’d never base your playbook around that piece if the goal was lead-gen. (It’s useful but tangential – not the core resource.) Instead, you’d base the playbook on an ebook, for example, or a template for someone to use… both of which can be housed behind a lead-gen form to hit your goal. 2. I t should solve the biggest problem facing your buyer persona. Using the buyer persona you’ve already created, determine their absolute biggest pain point. Your content resource should either educate your persona on the must-know things to overcome that challenge (and remember, your product is really the best solution, but they may no to ready to buy yet) OR your resource must be utility focused, like a free template, kit, workbook, or collection of assets that physically helps them execute. Avoid “thought leadership” fluff. 3. It should be well-researched, which helps you in two ways. Collecting quotes, data points, examples, and ideas from established authorities allows you to (a) create a higher quality piece and (b) use the same research to create a ton more content that in turn drives people to this central resource, thus hitting your goal. 26

4. It should live on a single URL. Whether or not it’s a file you can download or something web-based, your resource should have a single home. This allows you to point all your hyperlinks and various marketing activities to this spot. It also benefits your search rank, as anyone who references the piece will use the same URL, giving you some inbound links and added authority. “How Many Resources Should I Create?” To be a prolific and successful content marketer, you really only need one resource for quite awhile. The structure of the playbook above is a wheel: You can spin the wheel around the core resource again and again. In the coming pages, we’ll discuss each tactic as it relates to promoting a single, high-impact resource which, again, was built both to hit your business objective and to solve a huge pain point for your target persona. To editorialize a bit: That dual objective (hitting goals and helping buyers) is the beauty of content marketing. If done properly, you can add a ton of value to your audience and drive a ton of results, all without creating a ton of stuff. In other words, there’s no need to spam the world with low quality content in the name of volume. (Besides, that would require more resources anyway.) Win-win! Creating Your First Resource? If you’re creating your first resource to fuel your marketing, the easiest type is probably a PDF guide. If you’re B2B, this is intuitive – a guide to overcome a problem mimics how your product helps your buyer overcome the same obstacle. But B2C should also consider doing some research and creating a mission statement such that their product solves a broader problem, making a guide an effective tool to reach consumers. Maybe you sell luxurious coffee grounds and frame it as a way to de-stress. A guide to de-stressing at work aligns perfectly. Or maybe you sell the most comfortable underwear around, and that translates into confidence. Excellent! Create content that empowers and inspires your audience to be more confident.

27

How to Structure Your First Guide 1. Determine a single, huge pain point you can address that you’ve heard from your customers or prospects. Plan to solve that in this guide. 2. C reate a big, catchy headline and an explainer subtitle in smaller font. Refer to this guide’s cover for an example. 3. Use branded colors, but don’t splash your brand everywhere. Readers want knowledge, not a sales pitch. 4. I nside, write a basic intro outlining what the reader can expect to find in the guide. This intro should help the reader instantly align with your overarching mission, so it’s a perfect place to include your “one simple story” from earlier. 5. I n the body of your guide, break up blocks of text with headlines, chapter title pages, and/or bulleted lists. 6. Use visuals, but only if they add value. Graphics and charts should help illustrate what you’re writing or draw the eye. 7. Write a conclusion that wraps up the points you were trying to make. Either look to the future or summarize the takeaways. 8. The very last page should be a flyer on what you do. Include links and big calls-to-action. Remember, you constantly want to ask what happens next, after a reader finishes a piece of content – your core resource included. 9. Host your guide on a single URL, whether in a blog post or on a specific landing page. All related content you create after this should link here, as well as all your marketing.

28

HACK THIS!

Free Content Creation Tools

Robots haven’t replaced the writers, but these free tools can help you create content with machine-like efficiency and ability, without skimping on quality. (Click the logos to visit a given tool.)

Design your cover graphic and any other images in Canva, a free service offering pre-designed assets which you can manipulate before downloading. The tool was built to enable anyone feel like a pro designer.

If you’re creating an infographic specifically, this tool – like Canva – helps you design beautifully without in-depth knowledge of creative tech like PhotoShop.

Dafont offers a huge library of great-looking fonts which you can download. Interesting typography and fonts improves any piece, especially guides containing lots of plain text, SlideShares, and social graphics.

Skitch is a free app from Evernote which lets you take screenshots and easily and quickly mark them up. Great to visually explain what you’re writing about in your guide.

Storify allows you to collect media from across the web about a single subject and arrange it into a single story. A story can then be embedded anywhere.

Unsplash is, in their words, “Free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos.” No legalese to decipher.

ClickToTweet lets readers more easily share your work in the moment. You simply pre-write a tweet, along with the link back to your content, and ClickToTweet generates a link you can add anywhere. For example, you could add “Tweet this quote” and hyperlink the text, making it much more likely that people will share.

Thinglink enables you to upload an image and add callouts, links, and other media as hot spots right over the picture. They can then be embedded anywhere.

This is essentially a cloud-based version of PhotoShop. While it’s pretty complex, it’s also free. 29

How to Edit Your Resource (Without Getting Stuck Forever) Editing is critical – it helps you catch errors, smooth out language, and increase your credibility and quality. You can also catch issues that would have hurt your marketing results, like broken links. However, it’s very possible to write and re-write and edit for days on end. (There’s a reason most valedictorians don’t come from the English department – you can always improve your writing. You’ll never get that perfect 100 out of 100.) The goal is to make something great through editing but without crippling your ability to move forward. To help you edit more efficiently, try using this framework:

Efficient Editing Cheat-Sheet

Get a larger, standalone version to view or print on the author’s blog.

Tier 1: Mission Critical (The entire purpose of our company creating content. Never, ever skip.)

Tier 2: Important (Skipping won’t contradict your strategy but could hurt results or public perception.)

Tier 3: Ideal (Skipping these is okay if pressed for time, but it may be harder to stand out.)

Grammar, spelling, and facts are all correct and checked.

There is a clearly-stated thesis with factbased research, logical opinions, or true stories supporting it.

The argument/thesis is considered from all angles and defends/supports each, appropriate to our mission (i.e. This isn’t blind bias and can’t be easily refuted)

Our “one simple story” comes through overtly or implicitly (i.e. our unique angle is present).

The POV (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd person) and tense are consistent throughout.

It’s creatively written/designed/constructed. Competitors can’t easily copy this piece without significant work.

Content is helpful for our persona, not simply an interesting thought exercise or ego-driven piece for us.

Subheaders are used to break up blocks of text and are descriptive and actionable.

It holds attention throughout, and could trigger an action or emotional reaction in doing so.

Hyperlinks, images, videos, and other embedded media function properly.

The piece references and links to past content created by the company to extend its life, aid search rank, and point readers to more of our content.

It’s packaged in a unique format beyond the tried-and-true mediums. (Note: This is rare)

Mentions of our product and company are clearly marked and feel natural. No sneak selling is present.

Sources and examples are clearly cited using the primary work (and no Wikipedia).

Branding and style is consistent with all other marketing touchpoints for the company.

The piece will directly drive results for our main goal. If not, it assists by driving traffic to something that more directly hits our goal.

All “nepotism” has been disclosed (e.g. “Disclosure: X is our customer/board member/investor/in-house masseuse, etc.”)

Multimedia is incorporated in ways that add value, not just take up space (e.g. charts/ graphs, video, icons, etc.)

A call-to-action in, around, or below the content ties this to our marketing funnel and main goal.

The headline is optimized to attract clicks and get shares, while not over-selling what’s inside the actual work.

The piece offers original learning/ entertainment found nowhere else, even if the content was curated.

Content Marketer Interview: Dan Levy Attracting and Editing Talented Writers for Tough Topics Contributed by:

Dan Levy is the content strategist at Unbounce, makers of landing page and conversion optimization software, where he oversees their blog and other content. He previously helped build the award-winning business blog Sparksheet. How does Unbounce find and hire quality writers who are also subject matter experts in your industry niche? Finding awesome writers who are well-versed in our very nichey niche of conversion rate optimization is one of our greatest challenges. In the early days almost all our content was written by our co-founder, Oli Gardner, who is a super funny and engaging writer and also happens to be the authority on this stuff. So that set our editorial standards impossibly high. We source writers all the usual ways – by reading other blogs in our field and by vetting incoming pitches. But this niche is so young that a lot of experts have been brought up on the content we’ve put out over the past 5 years. In other words, not only are we educating online marketers (and potential leads and customers) with our content marketing, we’re also educating future writers. It’s quite cyclical and meta and cool!

Dan Levy

Content Strategist, Editor @danjl Unbounce.com/Blog Background: Content Strategist, Unbounce Editor, Sparksheet Content Manager, Dailybreak

If you’re working with a subject matter expert who’s not a great writer, how do you ensure quality in the final piece? We do a lot of back and forth with our contributors. A lot. But that doesn’t just go for the weaker writers. In fact, the better the content is, the more I tend to engage with it – you can go a lot deeper when you don’t have to deal with comma splices and subject-verb disagreement. And the best writers appreciate that level of engagement with their work. I’ve been told that many blog editors just say thanks and hit publish, and I think that’s disrespectful to both the writer and your audience. Regarding experts who can’t write, we’re very transparent about our editorial standards and guidelines from the get-go and I have no problem politely declining content from a well-known topic expert if they can’t deliver the goods. But my job is to help conversion experts tell their stories and transmit their knowledge, so I have a lot of patience for willing writers who just need that extra push. What 1-2 critical editorial processes did you learn in the media world prior to your time in content marketing? Fact-checking and attribution. There’s a lot of sloppy writing and editing in the content marketing space. And I’m not talking about typos. I’m talking about people using quotes, data, and case studies from other places and not properly attributing the content. Sometimes people will just throw in a link without providing any context and often they’ll misinterpret the data – or worse, spin it to fit their own thesis. My journalism experience has taught me to click through every link, double check every stat, and question every supposed “fact” in a piece of content. I once had to kill a post I’d worked on for weeks. The night before it was scheduled to go live, I discovered that the author had lifted every single case study he cited, in sequence, from another blog – and gotten a lot of it wrong to boot. Content marketing isn’t journalism per se but we owe it to our audience to hold ourselves to the same standards as any other publisher. What should startups require from guest bloggers to ensure quality while also building a pipeline of posts? Startups should require guest bloggers to demonstrate off the bat that they understand their audience and have the chops to deliver content that is useful to them. The writer’s pitch should be as delightful to read as the post itself. But it also works the other way around. We’re constantly refining (and testing!) the editorial guidelines on our landing pages, in our kickback emails, and on the blog itself. […] We realize that our guidelines may be intimidating to some people, and we’re fine with that. But intimidating isn’t the same thing as mean. We try to practice what we preach by making our guidelines funny, cheeky, surprising, delightful, and useful. It’s our way of saying, “This is who we are. Are you on the same page?

3. Blog About Your Resource Grow Email List Measured by: Unique Subscribers Goal: __________ __________


Email & Social



Next, you want to “atomize” that core resource. This is content marketerese for the act of producing a lot more, typically smaller, related pieces around a single work. These smaller pieces help promote that core resource. So while we’re still talking about content production, you should know that some content you create in this playbook is built to distribute your main resource, helping you hit your goal. Content marketing is meant to be a sustainable, consistent approach, and this core resource frames your ability to think up and create much more content – another reason that single piece in the middle is so critical. This is easiest to understand through an example. Let’s say we sold premium coffee pods for single-cup brewers, and our “one simple story” centered on busy professionals needing to find time to de-stress and reflect on the important things in life. (Just go with it – that’s our 60-second branding.) The “oh by the way” moment is that the best way to do those things is to buy and drink our coffee. Assume our core resource is “De-Stressing at Work: The 10 Best Tricks You Can Use in 60 Seconds or Less.” Atomizing it might looks like this: 1. Launch Post We need a single blog post to announce/distribute the resource directly. The headline matches our resource’s, and the content merely introduces the fact that we’ve created something the reader should see, leading to a big link or 32

other call-to-action to get the guide to de-stressing. Since our goal is growing our email database (see above visual playbook), we’ve put the resource behind a subscription form and incentivize signups with the content as the prize. 2. Brainstorm Blog Posts We’ll now take 10-20 minutes to think up potential blog post headlines that stem from the core resource, such as “X Stats Proving the Value of De-Stressing at Work,” or, “Tools, Apps, and Other Products to Help You Manage a Busy Schedule.” Every idea gets saved to the idea pipeline app we opened during the first half of this Growth Guide. The best ideas then get either discussed and scheduled or outright scheduled onto the editorial calendar, which we also opened earlier.

Hugely Important: When we do publish these blog posts, each will link to our core resource in both the copy and through a graphical button somewhere around or below the post to drive traffic. The goal of the posts is to drive traffic to the resource.

3. Brainstorm Graphics We also want to think up some visuals that could incentivize social sharing. Because our resource is about a stressed-out persona, small, “snackable” tips on simply-designed graphics, as well as beautiful, inspirational quotes and visuals packaged as slideshows, might both make great content. These ideas also get saved into the idea pipeline. 4. Curate Graphics, Videos, and Trending Posts Next we’ll do some searching or pull up an RSS reader like Feedly to scan relevant sites and look for inspiration. We might also search on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks where our target persona typically resides. Any relevant infographics and videos we find will be saved to our idea pipeline to embed on our blog later, along with our own unique commentary. For trending blog posts and/or news, we’ll save the URLs into our idea pipeline and write reaction posts through the lens of our “one simple story” and unique beliefs about the need to de-stressing at work.

33

How to Structure a Great Blog Post If you’re creative and can write incredibly well, rely on that! But for the rest of us mere mortals, it’s possible to use a loose template for structuring a compelling blog post. It runs something like this: 1. Hook: A statement or very brief paragraph that grabs people’s attention. You have precious few seconds to get someone excited to read the rest of your work. (For inspiration, simply look to your favorite blogs. They’re probably your favorite for a reason and wouldn’t be your favorite unless they could consistently hold your attention.) Example: Everyone thinks blogging is about being a thought leader. They’re wrong. 2. Nut Graf: This is a term that journalists use to describe a paragraph (or graf) that gives you the who-what-where-when-why of a story. For your purposes, it could be a combination of these or simply the thesis or main takeaways that you’ll explore later in the post. Example: The best corporate blogs focus instead on being helpful to their target buyer. 3. Body: The body should be a combination of stories, data, and other points and opinions to logically support whatever your nut graf said to be true. As a general rule, the longer the body, the more visual breaks or subheaders you should use. To keep it simple, try to work in at least three supportive points in a post. Example: Helpful blog posts (1) rank well on Google, (2) drive traffic over time (instead of relying on viral luck), and (3) address the same problems as your product, helping you reel in qualified traffic. 4. Conclusion: This is where you add tons of value and showcase your expertise by adding a few key takeaways. Example: So the next time you blog, instead of being clever, try to answer customer questions. 5. Call-to-Action (CTA):This is where your core resource comes back into the picture. If you ran the playbook properly, your blog post’s initial concept was based on that resource, so the reader moves seamlessly from the blog post to this CTA to grab your resource. To claim it, a reader will ideally take an action. In the example playbook we’re running in this Growth Guide, the goal is to build an email list – so we’d ask a reader join our newsletter or blog subscription list to download the content for free. (Note: The CTA should be both a hyperlink in the blog post text and a graphical button/banner.) Example: Ready to get started? Download this cheat-sheet for generating better blog posts.

How Often Should I Blog? At first, just focus on consistency. If you’re getting your blog up and running for the first time, set a reasonable goal (e.g. two times per week; five times per month, etc.) before getting more aggressive. Then, look at your competitors. If your competition is prolific, you need to either match their cadence (to reach the same target audience at the same rate and index a similar number of pages on Google), or you need to find a style or medium that will help you radically differentiate (e.g. you do mainly videos and graphics while they keep doing lots of text blog posts).

HACK THIS!

Brainstorm Like the Pros

Brilliantly creative and prolific writers are adept at taking one core concept and coming up with all kinds of angles and related tangents for content. The below exercise mimics that approach by force-framing your options. Use this to brainstorm a ton of content ideas quickly, all of which relate to your resource and can point traffic to it, helping you hit your goal. 1. What is the overarching topic or idea behind your core resource? e.g. De-stressing at work

2. What is your audience’s knowledge of that topic? Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

Executive

3. What will your content “physically” be? Randomly pick one. Blog Post

Graphic

1-Sheeter

SlideShare

Video

Podcast

Guide

4. How will the information in your content be presented? Randomly pick one. (The formats above can be presented multiple ways. For instance, a blog post could be a list, news, how-to, etc.) List

Interview

How-To

News

Opinion/Why

Data Analysis

5. With your brainstorm now more tightly framed, write down as many potential headlines as you can. Save them to your idea pipeline. ◉◉ ◉◉

10 Basic Tricks to De-Stressing at Work New to the Workforce? 5 Best Ways to Manage Stress

◉◉ ◉◉

Top 7 Books to Learn How to Manage Stress at Work etc.

6. When the ideas dry up, change number 3, 4, or both, and brainstorm again. 35

Content Marketer Interview: Erik Devaney How to Create Content Like the Prolific Pros Contributed by:

Erik Devaney is a Content Strategist at HubSpot and has held content marketing roles at three separate startups. Below, he discusses his time as the lone content marketer at Placester, a SaaS startup, and offers advice for hiring content creators in general. As the lone content creator at Placester, how did you produce enough content to meet the needs of marketing and sales? I worked with my director, Seth Price, to develop a production and promotion strategy that was based around “sprints.” Each sprint covered a different topic related to real estate marketing [Placester is a solution for realtors] and would include an ebook and between 5-7 blog posts that were pulled from the ebook. The production portion of the sprint – researching, writing, designing – lasted two weeks, while the promotion portion would continue on for 6-8 weeks. So essentially, during those first two weeks of the sprint I’d create all of the content, schedule all of the blog posts to be published, and then schedule all of our social media promotion on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. During the 6-8 weeks of promotion that followed, I could also start production on the next sprint. This resulted in a layering effect, so that after I got ramped up we had a regular stream of content that was constantly being promoted.

Erik Devaney Content Strategist @BardOfBoston ErikDevaney.com Background: Content Strategist, HubSpot Content Manager, Placester Content Manager, Dailybreak Freelance Writer

What’s an example of a successful piece created during one of your sprints? What made it successful? I was really happy with a SlideShare that we created called the “Top 25 Most Beautiful Real Estate Websites.” The idea for this particular piece of content seemed very simple at first glance: Search the internet for the most beautiful real estate websites, and put them on display. We made a point to highlight sites from all aspects of real estate, from individual agent sites to hotels and resorts. It didn’t matter if they used our platform and themes or not – if it was beautiful, we added it to the list. The end result: We tallied up 10,000 views in less than a week, which landed us on the SlideShare homepage (as well as on LinkedIn) as a featured presentation. Ultimately, this one SlideShare brought in a ton of leads – and I think we ended up tracing a dozen or so new customers back to that one piece after a few months. You’ve worked in content marketing for multiple years, from freelance to startups to larger companies. If an early-stage startup wanted to hire an Erik Devaney, how should they position the role and the company to candidates? My general sense is that content creators are inherently creative people: When we’re not “on the job,” we’re still busy creating, whether we’re writing for our personal blogs, making music, drawing, painting, carving, sculpting, or whipping up culinary creations in the kitchen. If an early-stage startup wants to attract top content-creating talent, they should make sure the innovative and creative aspects of their businesses really shine through. We want to work at places where thinking differently, taking risks, and exploring new marketing tactics and content formats are encouraged. And honestly, a lot can be gleaned just by looking at a website. If your website looks like it was designed in 1998, your logo is a simple, uninspired line of text, and your team page lists employees like they’re items on a spreadsheet (instead of highlighting their skills and personalities), content creators will likely be turned off.

36

4. Distribute Via Email and Social Grow Email List Measured by: Unique Subscribers Goal: __________ __________


Email & Social



With the exception of blogging, which should be ongoing, you’re now finished producing content and ready to actively promote it. Here are some quick steps to promoting your content via these two popular marketing channels: Promoting Via Social Media Every piece of content should be shared via social. The goal is to drive traffic to your site, mainly to that core resource. General Tips: 1. P ick one social network and be great at it. It’s okay to be present and push content out through other channels, but try to build a large, engaged following (“engaged” is key) in one single place. They prove invaluable to distribute content more easily, while driving traffic back to your core resource – the one piece built entirely around a business objective. 2. Use free apps like Buffer, HootSuite, or TweetDeck to pre-schedule the bulk of your posts. 3. Always post something unique, even if the link to the content is the same as a previous social post. If you already posted the headline or your guide once or twice, for example, use a stat, a quote, some commentary, a key takeaway, or a visual the next time. This avoids coming across as spammy, and it also enables you to add something original and valuable each time. 4. I f you quoted or cited a thought leader in your work, share it directly with them via social in a public manner. This alerts them and increases the odds they in turn share

37

it. For instance, if you quoted this guide, your tweet might be: “Great insight by @NextViewVC in our latest post on content for startups! [URL]” 5. Not every post needs a link – mix things up as you would on your blog. But the vast majority should contain a link to click or reason to share with others. Tips for Posting Content to Specific Networks: Post every piece you create to Google+ one time. Ensure you set up Google Authorship too, as this helps you on search. If you belong to any relevant communities, post there too, but ask for feedback or other questions, as communities are built for discussion, not just sharing. Post every piece once on Facebook with a visual. Always use some text, plus a link back to the content, in the actual body of your post. Post each piece to Twitter twice the day it launches, and about 2-3 more times that week. Never use the same copy. (See #3 to the left.) Occasionally include images to show up automatically in the feed – these images need to be twice as wide as they are tall, which formats them for the feed without getting cropped by Twitter. Make them catchy or descriptive, and avoid stock photos. Use a similar approach to Google+, posting once to your profile and once per relevant group. LinkedIn groups are perfect for B2B, but don’t spam – engage people. For B2C, consider using big, beautiful visuals which you can post to Pinterest. Post each relevant piece just once – if your content is primarily text, then create or curate a unique image just for the purposes of sharing to Pinterest.

38

Don’t Be Fooled: Email Still Matters Most A single fan on your email list is still more powerful than single fan anywhere else. You’re in the business of attracting and retaining attention as a content marketer, and there’s no place better equipped to reach, help, and resonate with an audience than via email, if you can do it correctly. By sending content, not me-first information like demo requests or sales collateral, two incredibly powerful trends emerge: First, your audience can continue to engage with you over time, allowing you to nurture them down your funnel to sale. Second, because you’re offering value by sending content, it increases the likelihood that your emails are forwarded around to new people that learn about you for the first time through their friends. An existing list, however small, is a powerful asset to expand your reach to new people, even though your list’s contacts are people you already know. (According to our own Jay Acunzo, Director of Platform here at NextView and former head of content at HubSpot, there was a time when the marketing team at HubSpot drove more new contacts through their existing email list than any other marketing channel.) Promoting Via Email Not every piece you create should be emailed. Send your core resource, as well as anything that adds unusual amounts of value (blog posts announcing major industry news, videos, infographics, etc.) Here are a few more tips, all of which can and should be A/B tested: ◉◉ The “From” field should be a person, with their actual name, face, and title listed as a sign-off in the body. It stands out more in noisy inboxes and feels less corporate and marketing-like to recipients. ◉◉ The subject line should be catchy and focus on benefits. Don’t always use the headline of your content. ◉◉ In the body of your email, include the major takeaways the reader will learn if they read the content.

39

◉◉ Towards the top of the email, use a large text call to action such as “Get the Guide” or “Get My Copy,” which links to your resource. DO NOT use a graphical call-to-action as your lone CTA, since some email apps won’t render images automatically. When you do include a graphic, name the image file something descriptive, as it may appear to the reader. ◉◉ Consider using a secondary CTA that asks your email recipients to forward the resource to others who may find it useful. ◉◉ Experiment exhaustively with the right send times, subject lines, CTAs, etc.

HACK THIS!

2 Email Tricks to Grow Reach

Hacks

Examples

Forward Calls-to-Action: A secondary CTA that overtly asks people to forward your content. Place a subtle link, button, or both near the bottom of your email. “Trojan Horse” Emails: It’s rarely possible to create a new resource in time for your next email send. You don’t want to spam by sending the original piece again, yet you want to (a) re-engage your list and (b) give them cause to forward the note to expand your reach. One trick is to send a must-know blog post relating to the original resource. Paste the entire post in the email body, and link very visibly to the core resource at the bottom. The existing list will love the new content and, if they forward it, the new contacts will see both the blog post AND the core resource, both of which are new to them. Best of all, unlike the blog post, that core resource is built to hit your main objectives.

Email #1 - Your Core Resource

DOWNLOAD Email #2 - “Trojan Horse” for Your Resource

Headline Entire blog post.

DOWNLOAD

40

5. Where Audiences Already Exist: Partners & Paid Grow Email List Measured by: Unique Subscribers Goal: __________ __________


Email & Social



When you start from scratch, it helps to bring your content to where audiences already spend their time. Paid channels can be straightforward solutions. Options include networks like Outbrain and Taboola that hold inventory on publisher sites to place sponsored links or amplification, more PR-focused software vendors like Cision, Meltwater Buzz, and Vocus. For a great writeup on what to watch for and consider, here’s marketing consultant and author Jay Baer on a recent amplification test. As for partners and syndication, you should use the outreach list to answer these questions: Which influential individuals (read: large AND engaged online following) would appreciate this resource or a related piece? Which can I reference in my content? ◉◉ Openly mention them on Twitter while sharing your content, but only if they’re included in the piece (otherwise, it feels very spammy). Email them if you can.

41

Which 3-5 industry blogs possess bigger audiences than me but aren’t unrealistic to reach? ◉◉ In these cases, you want to pitch a working headline for a blog post, with a quick blurb and link to related content to show your expertise. Then, be very flexible on edits they offer once you submit your draft – every editor believes they know their audience and how to write the best (and the good ones really do). Be a dream to work with. ◉◉ If you want to proactively request anything of the editor, it’s not the specifics of the language. Instead, ask if you can include a call-to-action back to the core resource. ◉◉ If you can’t, be sure to include a hyperlink in your author bio or the body of your post back to your resource and/or blog. Most blogs will at least give you this. Which “free-to-play” sites can I use to publish related content that points back to my resource? ◉◉ These include SlideShare for slideshows, BuzzFeed Community for fun, consumer-y lists, Social Media Today for marketing, SeekingAlpha.com for finance, and others. This should be industry specific and may require you do some research. Which smaller pieces can I create based on my resource for the purpose of reaching out to influential individuals or blogs? ◉◉ NOTE: It is imperative that the same content you use to attract a response from a third party still serves your buyer personas. Lists of inspirational quotes from influencers in your industry are great examples of straddling both audiences – the audience loves hearing from experts and seeing and sharing their quotes, and the influencers may enjoy the ego boost and retweet.

42

Startup Interview: Cloze Scrapping Your Way to Broader Content Distribution Contributed by:

True to startup form, Cloze has done a lot with a little as a seed-stage company, choosing to spend time on its personal network for content distribution, rather than paid or partner opportunities, which can suck up lots of resources that early-stage startups lack. Large companies benefit from their many employees sharing their content regularly, which often jumpstarts success on social media. What can small startups do to emulate that approach? Startups may not have the sheer numbers that larger companies do, but they make up for it with their strong culture. This culture leads to highly engaged and passionate employees and can easily extend to the networks of each employee, investor, partner and customer/user. Don’t underutilize this base. First, to get the word out: Create a newsletter giving them early access to your content even a few hours early makes them feel like they’re part of something special. It’s okay to ask them to share on their social networks, but make it dirt simple. They won’t cut and paste all day long. If you respect their time, they’ll help. You may also evolve this strategy to include content for different audiences – the more relevant your content is, the more likely that they’ll want to share it with their own network. Second, VCs have the opportunity to create collaboration amongst their portfolio companies. This network can include hundreds of companies and thousands of employees all with their own extended networks that help amplify your content.

Alex Cote Founder, CMO @alexcote

cloze.com Apps to connect with the people that matter most. Makers of Cloze Inbox for social and email and Circulate.it for team sharing. @Cloze /ClozeBiz

You wrote a post on getting PR for your startup in less than 30 minutes a day. What’s the biggest insight you can share? The number one recommendation I make is listen. In many cases timing is everything. With all of the responsibilities of building a product and company, keeping track of what writers are saying on social media is probably not at the top of your daily to-do list, but setting aside the time will pay off. Take your core list of writers and influencers and break them out into Twitter lists. By scanning these lists a few times a day you’ll find your opportunity to building relationships with writers far in advance of pitching your own story. If you spot an article you like, retweet it, or like it. If it makes sense, comment. Often times writers will ask questions or for help – lend a hand even if it doesn’t directly relate to your company. This is basic relationship-building 101: respect their time with brevity, offer to help them before you ask them to write about your startup. This Growth Guide mentions that email can also be used to grow reach (since people forward content). Cloze has access to a lot of great email data – what new trends should marketers know about? Roughly 50% of email is now opened first on mobile. For marketers, that creates two “gates” you need to get through: (1) whether someone deletes your message during triage, and (2) whether they actually remember to get back to it in the future. […] Instead of spending your time on beautiful graphics and long prose [in your emails], focus on a killer subject line that will get them to open. Ultimately, only the subject and maybe one sentence of content will be read, so make every word count.

(Disclosure: NextView is an investor in Cloze.)

43

In Conclusion 44

Personas, Process & Problem-Solving Content marketing is just solving the same problem that your product aims to solve. The difference is, rather than software or hardware, you’re offering education, empowerment, or inspiration. And – oh by the way – the very best way to solve that problem is still, in the end, your product. So as you look to find product-market fit and build a successful product fueling a successful company, your content marketing should become muscle memory and a supportive layer to everything you do. It may take some time (we recommend 6 to 10 weeks before tweaking your approach), but if you maintain (1) a stubborn focus on your persona, (2) a rigorous adherence to process and (3) the desire to help your audience execute better or think and feel a certain way with everything you publish, then you’ll be well on your way to sustaining and scaling your content marketing. Good luck!

Goal: __________ Measured by: __________


Email & Social

Core Resource Partnerships & Syndication

Paid Promotion

Buyer One Simple Persona Story

Central Hub

Funnel Focus

Idea Pipeline

Editorial Calendar

Outreach List

45

THANKS FOR READING! We hope this helps you give your startup the best possible start with content marketing. If it does, follow or share on Twitter:

Follow NextView

Share This Guide

About the Author Jay Acunzo is the Director of Platform and Community at NextView Ventures, where he leads the development of strategic initiatives that provide educational and business development opportunities for NextView’s portfolio companies, as well as the broader startup community. Jay began his career as a digital media strategist at Google, built the editorial team at VC-backed startup Dailybreak Media, and led content production and strategy at HubSpot prior to joining NextView. Jay is also co-founder of Boston Content, a local community of over 500 content marketers and producers.

Follow @Jay_zo