We all know how important a good content strategy is for SEO. When you're working at scale, though, your content and SEOstrategies must perform a lot of heavy lifting before they can make a difference. In fact, digital content creation by alone will not suffice.
If a Fortune 1000 company like Intel or a major ecommerce site like Macy's wants to see organic results, they can't rely exclusively on a great blog strategy or on-page SEO. Content must be approached differently on sites with thousands of product pages and millions of visitors.
So, how do you go from producing 10X content to producing 10X content without putting in 10X the effort? Create a procedure for each aspect of the plan and use content atomization to create many iterations of key material.
Points to Remember
- To 10X SEO outcomes, Fortune 1000 and major ecommerce sites require scalable content strategy.
- Define your goals before you start creating content, and give the planning phase just as much weight as the actual content creation process.
- Create a content strategy that incorporates keyword research and the consumer journey. Create a content calendar and style guides after that.
- Streamline your content creation process by implementing procedures and using project management software.
- By atomizing your content, you can produce 10 times as much content with half the effort.
- Examine organic search traffic, conduct audits, measure engagement, track conversions, and use behavioural analytics to continuously improve your content output.
Here's how to make sure that all of your content marketing initiatives are successful:
Prior to the start of content creation
With all of the advantages of content marketing, it's tempting to get ahead of the game. However, if you want to get a 10X return on investment, you'll need to plan ahead of time.
The time you spend on content creation may be less than the time you spend planning in a full-scale content strategy. It's a little like hosting a huge party: obviously, the way things go on the big day is crucial. However, the event's success is determined by the months of planning and organisation that precede it.
Define your content objectives.
What are your content's objectives? Consider the audience segment you're aiming for and include hard figures. How many new visitors will be attracted by the content? What will the content strategy's overall impact be on brand recognition, organic traffic, mailing list opt-ins, and revenue?
Consider how your objectives should alter depending on the audience segments you're targeting. For example, if you're conducting a financial services SEO campaign for a multinational corporation like M&T Bank, your content goals for home-buying millennials and parents of college-bound students would be very different.
Then consider what might constitute a "conversion" for various content kinds. It's possible that some of your conversions will result in sales. They may seem as a new site visitor reading an article and exploring the rest of the site at other times. Other times, they'll be comments or other signs of a receptive audience. Other times, you'll want them to register for a relevant webinar, download an ebook, or connect with an interactive product.
As you progress through the purchasing funnel, your goals will shift as you move from the "awareness" stage to the "purchase" stage. In this post about ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu, you can learn more about funnels.
Assign roles to team members.
Define roles for each member of the content team ahead of time. It's not just about defining roles and expectations; it's also about establishing a smooth, efficient communication and process flow. Establish a strategy of thinking, brainstorming, creating, editing, publishing, and sharing that is consistent from one content cycle to the next.
Develop a keyword research strategy.
Your content strategy should be based on SEO. Keyword research data will not only ensure that your content receives an organic return, but it will also inform you about your target audience. What is important to your customers? Which themes pique their interest? What are they searching for in terms of solutions?
Remember to incorporate long-tail keyword research into your content strategy, as well as short-tail keywords where appropriate.
Analyze the customer journey and map keywords to it.
Match the stages of the client journey (awareness, consideration, and purchase) to your objectives. Then, for your keyword research, use the map you made as a cross-reference. This will ensure that each member of the target audience receives the exact material they require at the precise point in the conversion funnel.
Create a content strategy.
It's time to flesh out your content strategy framework, which you should have by now. What projects will guide your strategy year after year, quarter after quarter? How frequently will the content marketing team meet for brainstorming sessions? When it comes to keyword research, where does it fit into the process? What resources will you set aside to create content for each audience category and persona? What are you hoping to achieve when your audience reads your material, and how will you know if you've succeeded? For example, your ultimate goal can be to increase client lifetime value by keeping customers engaged after they've made a transaction.
Additional research, such as doing content audits on your own and competitor websites, should be included in the development of your content strategy. Determine the frequency with which recurrent competitor research will be incorporated into your content process after they're completed.
Select the types of content marketing that you want to use.
What are the best content marketing formats for each topic and target segment? How many content marketing samples per format will you come up with and publish each month? What additional resources would you require to ensure the execution of this type of content? This is where you'll begin to see your logistics strategy take shape.
Determine how often blog entries, articles, resources, videos, infographics, white papers, social media posts, podcasts, and guest pieces will be published. Is there a sufficient number of staff in-house to handle the editorial flow? If not, do you think you'll need to hire/outsource content writers?
Firms that create digital content vs. freelancers
You can quickly scale output with the support of a digital content production agency. You must, however, measure the benefits against the costs.
Freelance writers, on the other hand, are a lot less expensive alternative to a full-service branded content production firm, but they also come with their own set of issues. Will you, for example, use an outsourcing firm or hire freelance writers? If those authors have several clients, how will you keep them or manage their projects? Will you be able to get your deliverables on time?
You'll also need to figure out who will be in charge of managing the micro-processes required in interacting with outside team members, in addition to the expense. Who will, for example, proofread the text for brand voice and check for language errors and plagiarism?
Make a content schedule.
When it comes to delegating content production tasks, the editorial calendar is a must-have tool. Allow important occasions and efforts to take precedence on your calendar. Prepare content in advance of holidays, product launches, and large digital marketing campaigns. Then fill in the holes with more evergreen, compelling content. Because each topic can be executed in numerous formats that flow into one other, your calendar will also assist you atomize your content development.
Many businesses opt to incorporate their content calendar into their project management software, allocating tasks as they are completed. CoSchedule is a project management platform for marketing that makes integrating a content calendar a simple (read more about this below).
Make a style guide
Create a style guide that covers all of the additional information that your content team needs to know, starting with your existing brand style guides. What kind of tone and voice should the content have? What will this voice and tone look like as each format and buyer persona's needs change? Separately address each format and audience, citing examples if possible.
Still need to figure out who your target market is? To map your customer's interests, use these fantastic buyer persona examples.
Your style guide is also the area to handle any nitty gritty subjective issues your team may have, such as when multiple spellings of a word are correct but you want to maintain brand consistency across the board. Is your company, for example, pro- or anti-Oxford comma? You might also come across industry words that have many spelling variations, such as SEO for ecommerce vs. "e-commerce" or link building vs. link-building. To avoid inconsistencies and editorial confusion throughout your company's whole content environment, choose a favourite and make it the standard.
Set up a content creation procedure.
You'll need to set up a content production process, which includes workflows, technology, and team structure, in order to increase your output.
Deploy workflows and processes for content.
Now it's time to have some fun! You established your engine during the strategy phase, but now it's time to fine-tune it to ensure that everything is a) connected and b) communicating as efficiently as possible. Create a standard timeline and editorial flow for each piece of content, ensuring that deadlines and handoffs are explicit and that a method for spotting and fixing blockages is in place.
It will be easier to expand your corporate SEO efforts and achieve 10X content creation benefits if you build precise routines and processes. To put it another way, without clearly defined workflows and processes, scaling your content production will be incredibly challenging.
To develop material quickly, use project management software.
When it comes to delivering high-quality content at scale, project management software is your best friend. Use the tools your firm already has, and supplement it with a content management system if your current software isn't up to the task. Here's a quick rundown of some of the most popular project management and content creation platforms:
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is part content calendar, part workflow architecture, and part task management system, and it's the only tool on our list designed particularly for editorial creation and administration. While other platforms have calendar interfaces, our solution is driven by the content calendar. That means your calendar contains all of the tools you'll need to manage your whole production and task management process.
AirTable
AirTable is an excellent solution if your team disagrees about how the workflow should be arranged and displayed. Calendar, spreadsheet, kanban board, gallery, and form are just a few of the organising forms supported by the platform. The variety of options is sufficient to accommodate a wide range of working styles.
Basecamp
Basecamp is one of our list's oldest project management applications, but it's still going strong. The organisation, in reality, is quick to adapt to new interfaces and client demands. When it comes to comprehensive, project-based talks, the platform continues to shine. Its antiquity and widespread use make it a valuable tool in project management. New staff are unlikely to have never used Basecamp before, so they'll be able to get their feet wet right away rather than having to master a new platform.
Asana
Asana is the only tool on our list that includes a timeline view, which can be used to give your team a visual representation of how content flows. It also allows you to switch perspectives quickly, just like AirTable.
Trello
Trello, another visual learning platform, polishes the kanban format till it's feature-rich and beautiful. The changeable cards are a wonderful method to show where different pieces of content are in the production cycle, so team members can see when the ball is in their court.
Process Street's ability to templatize makes it simple to incorporate processes into your content marketing approach. Every typical form of content, campaign, and product release should have a structure in place. Instead of recreating the wheel with each new content cycle, you'll be able to replicate and build on those technologies with Process Street.
Atomize your content It's challenging to scale creative content production efficiently.
However, you can get around this problem by atomizing your material. Simply simply, content atomization is the act of generating several pieces of material from a single source.
Iterative content pieces should be created.
For example, if you have a white paper about student loans that is 70% applicable to other verticals like auto loans, home loans, bad credit loans, and personal loans (not to mention other potential sub-topics like secured vs. unsecured personal loans, fixed-rate vs. variable rate personal loans, debt consolidation loans, and so on), you could template the base white paper and then customise the remaining 30% as needed to create an individual white paper.
Boom! For half the labour, you've got dozens of hyper-specific white papers.
Create material in a variety of forms.
Repurpose the same material into different formats after you've created all those white papers. You'll broaden your coverage, reach more people, and provide news in the format that new consumers choose. After all, some people like reading, while others prefer visual learning, and still others prefer aural learning, and so on.
Take a look at the various visual content marketing forms you can make with a single white paper.
- Posts on the blog
- Posts by visitors
- Videos
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Ebooks
- Presentations on SlideShare
- Worksheets
- Games for the table
- games on the computer
Make a series of related material.
Creating a series on a certain topic is another efficient way to 10X content generation through content atomization. Consider the white paper on student loans. Don't just make a white paper regarding student loans and then duplicate it in several formats. Instead, divide the content into stages using a series that explains student loans to your audience. You can go through all of the important possibilities, such as how to analyse student loans, how to compare student loans efficiently, the most common mistakes to avoid, repayment methods, and other related issues.
As a result, you'll be able to turn your white paper into a well-coordinated blog series. There's also a video series, a podcast series, a webinar series, and so on.
When you multiply this by the number of verticals and sub-topics in your initial white paper, you have an exponentially larger volume of content. Consider the financial impact of this content tsunami vs a single isolated content item in a single format.
Content atomization broadens your marketing strategy's reach and wraps your content around your target audience. They keep running across your content no matter where they go, whether it's Google, YouTube, SlideShare, or somewhere else. You keep drawing their attention to yourself over and over. This gives consumers the impression that you're an expert on the subject, a thought leader in the field, and a trustworthy brand.
Make use of a content creation calendar.
What's the key to a well-oiled content strategy? Not only for the draught and final edit, but for every stage of the process. Every deadline should be apparent not just to the people involved in each stage, but also to the people who are receiving the hand-off, from brainstorming to checking the connections on the final on-site piece. Stick to the same day each week for each phase of the process for shorter projects like blog posts. This will assist your staff in becoming accustomed to a routine's flow.
It's all too easy to push non-priority projects on the back burner until they, well, become a priority. However, rushing from one last-minute deadline to the next is a surefire way to burn out your entire crew.
Many people (particularly content creators) claim that they function best under duress. However, it only takes a small amount of stress to push someone past their stress threshold. They can't produce their best work when they're beyond their optimal level.
Allow for some breathing room for everyone and set each deadline well ahead of the planned publishing date. It's also crucial to provide a buffer every time the content is sent. Pull a non-priority piece of content or outsource portion of the production to a freelancer who can produce material faster if you realise the team is falling behind. If this occurs on a regular basis, more drastic measures are required. Perhaps your goal pace was unrealistic, or you simply need to hire more staff.
Estimate the return on investment from content marketing
It's not about producing as much material as possible just for the sake of having content when it comes to optimising your content production. It would be a waste of time and resources if we did that. Rather, it's about developing a scalable process that transforms your content into a strategic advantage that boosts your SEO ROI.
So, once you've published all of your excellent material, track your content marketing ROI so you can fine-tune your strategy.
Keep an eye on SEO and engagement: which elements are resulting in the most organic search traffic, time on site, interaction, and conversions? How can you incorporate similar content into your editorial calendar? How can you iteratively develop versions for different target segments using 70% of a content piece that has outperformed your other content?
Use tools like Decibel, Clicktale, and Mouseflow to evaluate how (or if) your content is being digested and if it's moving customers along the purchase funnel. If your audience isn't engaged, try experimenting with various elements or messaging to see what works best. guaranteeing that your improved output results in a cascade of concrete benefits for your brand
Examine your content's performance on a regular basis to discover where you can atomize and add value to the blog entries you're already writing. Is it possible to turn them into white paper? Has it been turned into a webinar? Are you a part of an ABM campaign? Every improvement has the potential to boost your overall marketing ROI.
Then, on a regular basis, conduct content and competitor audits to determine where you have further potential, and reproduce and iterate accordingly. Your organisation will become a full-fledged content powerhouse before you know it.