Neil Patel suggests a 9-tiered content marketing procedure that builds a solid foundation for a content marketing initiative. He’s assuming a content marketing team, but even solo pros need a plan and can take advantage of this one with some adjustments.
#1 Set a tiered goal
“Set quantifiable annual, quarterly, and monthly progress goals so everyone knows what to aim for.”
Neil insists that one article per day and at least 3 posts are the dead minimum, but that’s more suited to large content teams than SMB or solo pros. Nevertheless, setting concrete objectives is a must for content teams of any size. (Including 1.)
#2. Quantify ROI
“The only way to know something isn’t working is to quantify it. Lead generation and sales should increase by a certain percentage by the end of the year. Any increases to the content marketing budget should reflect an appropriate lead generation and sales increase by the end of that fiscal year.”
Agreed. No matter how large or small those sales and leads are, the main thing to track your percentages. If you spent more money and/or time on content marketing, then your increase should reflect that.
#3. Determine content purpose.
“Before you create content, you need to identify the reason for the content. The internal focus ultimately is to drive sales, but content marketing isn’t salesy content.”
There are two kinds of content that fit in here: evergreen content that lasts for a long time and topical the gets a lot of attention at the point of publishing. They’re both important: evergreen content can get you positive attention for months, even years to come. Topical gets you focused attention right when everyone is paying attention to the topic.
#4. Create an editorial calendar.
“To keep things running smoothly, it’s important to create a monthly and annual editorial calendar. Use it to work ahead and understand ultimate deadlines while working on multiple projects.”
I could not agree more. As a team or solo professional, you’ll find yourself floundering if you don’t have a working editorial calendar. Don’t do what I used to though create aggressive editorial calendar in the mistaken belief just because it was on the calendar, I was automatically going to do it. Push yourself slightly with the calendar and stick to it, but be very realistic about what you’re really going to do.
#5. Generate clickable titles
“If you used a headline such as ‘Businesses Teaches Helpful Things,’ you’re unlikely to attract many readers. ‘12 Business Lessons from Successful Company Owners’ would draw more clicks.”
It’s very easy to get cynical about numbers. 5 ways to do the wave at football game, or 12 ways to make one billion dollars in 30 days or less. But it’s true that the more practical the headline, the more people are likely to click on it.
#6. Contract writers, editors, and graphic designers
“Once you have an editorial calendar filled, it’s time to hire writers, editors, and graphic designers to execute it.”
Large companies will have some of this staff on hand, although even the largest company works with freelancers. Midsize and SMB businesses are the most likely to hire outside writers for long form content. Solo pros can contract outside writers, although they may be on their own. The important thing is that even if you’re a one-person shop and you’re creating your own content that you do it as efficiently as possible. Understand exactly what your target and objective is for this piece of content. Write it accordingly. Look at attractive designs and apply the simplest and most effective of them to your stuff. Edit the heck out of it. Then release it.
#7. Document procedures and training
“Detail the procedures for every job in writing. That way when you expand (or must replace someone), it’s easy to keep the process going.”
This may seem like overkill for SMB and solo pros, but it’s not. You would be amazed how often someone who’s done newsletters, or books, or courses, or blogs, reinvents the wheel because they haven’t written down the process. You might fill a binder where a large digital document with your processes, or you may have a few notes with processes in Evernote. (I half-killed myself writing down procedures until I hit on writing one procedure per note in Evernote, and tagging them “procedure.”) It doesn’t matter how you do it. It just matters you are effectively documenting processes to speed up your time and improve the quality of your production.
#8. Promote and backlink
“There’s no point in publishing content if nobody is promoting it. You can link multiple social media accounts within your content management system to automatically publicize your content as soon as it’s published.”
If you are using marketing automation software, then you’re in like Flint. If you’re not, then simple and inexpensive packages such as HootSuite can help tremendously to schedule and distribute your content across your social media platforms.
#9. Do not sell
“Content marketing is different from marketing content. Everything you do in content marketing should be to educate, entertain, or inform.”
I am not sold on this. I think that content marketing is a subset of marketing content. I do agree that content marketing does not contain hard sells, but is primarily informational and entertaining — always with the goal to get your reader to take action. The ultimate motivation is still making that sale.