Content marketing—it’s definitely a buzzword and though the term may be overused, the concept shouldn’t be overlooked.

At the heart of it, content marketers are recognizing that the buying journey has changed, and they are responding to those changes. Prospects don’t sit back and wait for companies and brands to tell them what they need. With the onslaught of information and access these days, they will tell us what they need and when they need it.

Content marketing plays a crucial role in this shift. If our customers and prospects are researching everything independently before we even know who they are, then we need to make absolutely sure we are easy for them to find and that we are providing relevant, timely and accurate content to help them along the journey. That’s what content marketing is — creating and sharing information to retain customers; it is not taking a sales pitch or advertisement and redressing it.

Here’s your plan, in 7 steps...

1. Listen

The best way to start any content marketing strategy is to step out of your bubble and get input from all the stakeholders. Ideally you can do this together in a conversational way that helps you…

• Define your audience and create your personas.

• Create goals: both qualitative and quantitative.

It is important for everyone from the C-Suite to Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service to be on the same page about what you are trying to accomplish.

2. Perform an Internal Content Audit

It’s hard to move forward without knowing where you’ve been. Take the time to perform a full internal content audit to understand the topics and resources that have already been developed. Create a spreadsheet to list all existing articles, webinars, blogs etc. and rank them…

• Still relevant

• Can be refreshed

• Time to retire

Review their performance to see which ones performed well and what fell flat to get a better understanding of what attracts your audience.

3. Research What the Competition is Doing

Research where your competitors are engaging with customers and what they are talking about. By reviewing what they are producing and the channels that they are having success in, you can widen your scope to make sure you don’t have any big holes in your content strategy.

4. Brainstorm

This isn’t the time to censor yourself (you can do that when you get to the plan). For now, just get all the ideas out on paper. What topics would be great to produce? Who can help with the creation? What formats will be valuable (i.e. blog, podcast, webinars, interactive landing pages, white papers etc.)?

5. Devise a Plan

Now it is time to drill down, set your priorities and determine what you can realistically accomplish. There are many ways to set up your plan; use excel, Trello, Google Calendar, etc. The format is only important in that it is easy to access and edit and that it’s a reference for plan. A super fancy presentation of your editorial calendar is worth very little if it is not an effective tool to help you implement. Make the plan realistic and executable.

(We here at Think Better are partial to the Trello Editorial Calendar to keep our team on track.)

6. Create the Content

Use your whole company to develop great content. It’s easy to feel like all of the work should just live within the marketing department. Sure, someone at your company needs to take ownership of the process, but don’t let that keep you from tapping in to all of the other great resources you have at your company, in all departments.

Get the whole team involved in brainstorming content topics. When it is time to create, if someone isn’t a confident writer but they have great expertise to share, pair them with someone who can help take that expertise and put it into a piece that will help others.

Successful content can take many forms, always ask yourself: How can the original content format be repurposed? Don’t let a webinar die at sending out the slides. Tweet the best questions, take each topic and pull it out into separate blog posts, turn a key discussion into an infographic—and the list goes on.

To help keep topics on track and focused, we like to use a creative brief. Sometimes themes can get misinterpreted. Download our creative brief template to streamline your process and avoid ideas lost in translation.

7. Analyze Performance

After your content marketing machine gets moving, don’t forget to analyze what is working and what isn’t. Go back to your KPIs, record them and determine what works and what needs a boost.

The key to a successful strategy is producing relevant, valuable, and accurate content for your audience. Focus on what you know and be authentic.

Copywriting is the foundation of content marketing.

Whether you’re a marketer or not, being able to clearly express your views, or your company's message, through content writing is a skill worth developing. Every one of us is, in fact, a writer, so you better get used to it.

These days, thought leaders and industry professionals are expected to be active in posting blog articles, social media posts, or speaking at live and virtual events. It takes copywriting skills to create websites, develop a brand message, launch an advertising campaign, send emails… the list goes on. The point is, everybody writes, and it’s worth your while to hone your skills to make you and/or your brand stand out and connect with customers and prospects.

The team at Think Better is constantly writing for both our clients and for our own brand. Through testing and experience, we’ve developed a set of guidelines, a process, and a list of helpful tools, to guide us. We’d like to share our findings with you.

Think Better’s Writing Guidelines

Let’s face it, English is a complicated language, and some details can be left up to personal preference. To ensure consistency, we have an internal set of guidelines that we use. Sometimes our clients have different preferences, and we adapt. The important thing is to keep consistent.

Below is the Style Guidance shared from our own Think Better writing guidelines. Remember that these are our preferences. If you’d like to use MLA standards instead of the Chicago Manual or adopt a different voice, that’s totally up to you.

THINK BETTER STYLE GUIDANCE

• Focus Your Message. There should be a single primary message or point that you’re trying to communicate and supporting information for that message or point.

• Be Concise. Avoid unnecessary modifiers. Use short words and sentences. Watch for run-on sentences.

• Write With Intention. Make sure that your sentences are clear, that they have the basics of a verb and a noun and articulate a clear thought.

• Avoid Sales Language. Write how you would speak. Don’t use jargon and marketing-speak.

• Use the Chicago Manual of Style. If you’re curious whether or not you should use a serial comma or not, or if something is capitalized, check the Chicago Manual of Style.

Grammar Rules

Grammar is super important. We find that improper grammar can damage trust and make brands seem less reliable. Set expectations for the type of grammar you want to see and keep it uniform. Some swear by the Oxford comma, others hate it. Either way is fine, but you need to set the standard and stick to it.

As an example of some of our grammar rules, see what standards we’ve set for commas, capitalization, and numbers below.

GRAMMAR RULES FROM THE THINK BETTER GRAMMAR GUIDE

Commas When writing a list, use the serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma).


• Yes: David admires his parents, Oprah, and Justin Timberlake.

• No: David admires his parents, Oprah and Justin Timberlake.

Capitalization Subject lines should use title case, but all else should use sentence case. The only words that should be capitalized in the middle of a sentence are proper nouns. Use the Chicago Manual of Style for title case rules.

Numbers Spell out a number when it begins a sentence. If the piece you’re writing is data-heavy, use numerals and the % sign. If not (in most cases) spell out all numbers up to ten and any numbers larger than ten, like 23, can be written as a numeral. “Percent” should be written, unless, as mentioned, the piece is data-heavy.

• Ten new employees started on Monday, and 12 start next week.

• I ate three donuts at Coffee Hour.

• Meg won 1st place in last year’s Walktober contest.

• We hosted a group of 8th graders who are learning to code.

Numbers over 3 digits get commas:

• 999

• 1,000

• 150,000

Write out big numbers in full. Abbreviate them if there are space restraints, as in a tweet or a chart: 1k, 150k.

OTHER GRAMMAR EXPECTATIONS THAT YOU SHOULD SET INCLUDE:

• Abbreviations and acronyms: How do you present abbreviations or acronyms to ensure your audience isn’t lost on them?

• Active voice usage: How important is it to you to use the active voice vs. the passive voice?

• Dashes and hyphens: Do you use spaces between letters and hyphens or em dashes?

• Ellipses: Is it okay to use them, and when?

Writing Tools

While copywriting can be tricky, you don’t need to go it alone! There are a variety of tools out there that can help spiff up and quality check your writing. Plus, no one is born a copywriting genius. Like most things, it takes practice to become efficient AND effective with your writing.

Here is a list of tools we use to fine-tune our writing.

Grammarly We don’t know where we’d be without Grammarly. This virtual writing assistant checks spelling and grammar, lets you know when you’ve been using the passive voice excessively, and even suggests alternatives when you use the same word too much. We pass everything we publish (including this article) through Grammarly before we post it.

Capitalize My Title If you’re using title case and are not sure which words to capitalize and which words can stay lowercase, capitalizemytitle.com can help. Just paste in your title, select your style, and like magic your title is complete.

Thesaurus.com Using the same words over and over again makes your writing boring. We are always using a thesaurus to come up with new words that we can use to get the point across.

Grammar Girl When you see a grammar tip from Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, pay attention. She is excellent at explaining specific grammar rules and giving examples.

COPYWRITING LITERATURE

We’re book worms so naturally, we like to read about writing. We think that the following books should be mandatory for anyone who writes. (That includes you!)

• Everybody Writes, Ann Handley: This is a go-to guide for attracting and retaining customers through written communication. Its short chapters are interesting, easy to read, and very informative.

• The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl:  Mignon Fogarty: We love Grammar Girl, and this book helped set straight grammar rules that have stumped us since elementary school in a quick and simple format.

Think Better Writing Process

Lastly, to make things stick, make a short checklist to follow before you make your writing public. Here is ours:

• Proofread what you’ve written twice before you share it with anyone.

• Use Grammarly to check your email, blog, article, etc. before sharing with anyone.

• When in doubt, review our guidelines or Grammar Girl to find grammar rules.

• Write with a single reader in mind. This makes it easier to focus your language and message.

• Have at least one person proofread before posting after following the previous rules.

It’s time to say goodbye to wasted time and procrastination and hello to productivity. 

Content takes some serious creative juices and time so it pays to amp up the productivity. One important aspect of productivity is making sure our tools are working hard for us. We have to ensure that our processes are enabling us...not hindering us and that our team is aligned.

At Think Better, we strive to live up to our name and take the time to set ourselves up with tools that allow us to think, work, and create better content for ourselves and our clients. 

Here is a breakdown of some of our favorite tools that help us do just that…

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I’ve tried everything from good ol’ fashioned spreadsheets to incredibly sophisticated developer tools to keep projects on track. I have found Trello to be the best at helping move a project along while keeping my team aligned with priorities and status updates. Yet it does not layer on so much “process” that it gets in the way of efficiency. 

Pro Tip: Use their board templates to find suggestions on ways to set up your boards; they have some powerful suggestions! Our preferred Trello approach is a Kanban approach that gives us a look at the work we have planned for the quarter, and the work that needs to happen more immediately. 

MARKETING AUTOMATION & CRM

There is no shortage of email services, marketing automation software solutions, and CRM options on the market. Everyone has different opinions on what works best, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. For myself and the Think Better team, we love the fact that HubSpot is an all-in-one. You can get started for as little as $50/month to check it out. To learn more, read Which HubSpot Marketing Plan is Right for Your Business.

Set up your marketing campaigns, create your nurture workflows, and build landing pages all in one place. Add in the Sales and Service Hub packages, and you have a single source of truth that your entire organization uses to engage with your customers. (Note: for sales teams who love SalesForce, HubSpot has seamless integration with them as well as other options out there on the market.)

Pro Tip: Create a best practices document to keep everyone on the same page. From campaign organization to naming conventions it will keep everything organized—spend your time creating amazing campaigns, instead of searching for the file you just know is in there somewhere. 

*Full disclosure, Think Better is a HubSpot Agency Partner. 

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Again, I have to say that for me personally, HubSpot wins in this category as well. Their full breadth of template options helps ensure responsive designs while not looking like everyone else and their interface is incredibly user-friendly. However, some projects require additional customization, and for those, we turn to either SquareSpace or WordPress.

Pro Tip: Spend the upfront time to get your templates ready before launch. When you require new pages or updates, it is so much more seamless to get them up and running. 

COLLABORATION

In a world where many of us work remotely we need ways to stay connected that go well beyond the water cooler. We have found Google Drive to be a wonder at keeping our documents accessible, searchable, and editable for our entire team. As part of the Google Drive Suite, we also use sharing Google Calendars to cut down on the scheduling back and forth and to see our teams availability with just a few clicks.

Pro tip: Folder organization is your friend. Clearly define how you want to organize folders with your team, agree on it, and stick to it. 

Zoom provides a great way for us to step outside of our inboxes and talk with each other even if we aren’t on the same continent at times. There is a need to connect and “see” each other. When grabbing a coffee isn’t possible, Zoom has been the next best thing for us. 

When we don’t need a full meeting, or we want to keep a running dialogue on a project conversation, Slack is where we turn. We find it to be a better way to keep notes and status on conversations and to keep the whole team in the know. 

Pro tip: Talk to your team about when you want to use different modes of communication. When is email best? Slack? Zoom? A good ‘ol fashioned phone call?

DESIGN

If you are embarking on a brand redesign, website overhaul, or other major design project, it is time to invite a design professional to join the project. While we all fight the urge to do everything ourselves, some things require an expert. Plain and simple. 

However, there are many things we can take on ourselves with a little help from some great software programs. I have found tremendous success with Canva. Their pre-built templates offer an opportunity to get design inspiration from the experts, and the flexibility of the tool allows you to make it yours. They have also built in all of the correct sizing of different elements, so you don’t have to guess or spend all your time looking up sizes.

Pro Tip: Pay for the pro version (it is super reasonable...seriously) so you can share designs across your team and set up brand colors and fonts. It isn’t much and will save time in the long run.

Adobe Creative Cloud is also an incredibly powerful suite of design tools to use. However, this is not for beginners, and you need to have a strong design sense and experience with the software programs to make it useful. 

Pro Tip: If you are spending more than an hour just trying to figure out how to change a color...call an expert. It will save you time and money in the long run...not to mention it will likely look better.

Any good design project requires excellent imagery. For a library of free images and illustrations, we love the site Pexels and UnSplash. 

Pro Tip: Keep in mind how you are using the image and be sure to download the appropriate version for your project.

WRITING

My colleague, Susan Evans Green recently took a deep dive into this with “Tips and Tools to Master Copywriting” check it out for her recommendations on how to clearly express your message and connect with your audience. 

Well before the technology revolution, Abraham Lincoln agreed, having the right tools to do the job is critical.

“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe”

— ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Embrace this time of year as a time to make sure all of your tools are sharpened and ready for the job! Do you have other tips and tools that keep you moving at work? Please share!

The term “content marketing” is tossed around a lot these days, but what does it really mean? 

Content marketing embodies a strategic approach that aims to create and distribute relevant, valuable content to attract and nurture a target audience. The content should be engaging, consistent, and ultimately drive lead and customer action. 

I want to highlight one of the adjectives used to describe successful content marketing: valuable. If the content you’re making doesn’t provide value to those you are trying to attract, then you’re wasting your time and money. People get bombarded with marketing messages from the time they wake up until their head hits the pillow. If you want to get their attention, you have to give them something of value. 

You can’t pull valuable and relevant content out of thin air. It takes time, energy, and money to create something worthwhile. In order to be efficient, you need to start thinking “lean.” It’s difficult to keep up with a consistent flow of content, but if you’re smart about it and incorporating lean thinking, you can make each piece of content work harder for you and take on various formats and situations. 

The origins of “Lean Thinking.”

The philosophy of “lean thinking” originated on the manufacturing floor of Toyota. The Japanese auto manufacturer wanted to create a system of visual cues, decision-making practices, and guiding principles to optimize their business. This practice brought Toyota from bankruptcy in the early 1950s to the dominant automaker we know today. 

Leading principles in lean thinking include identifying value, eliminating waste, mapping out the value stream, and building in quality to increase productivity and support sustainable growth. Adopting this type of thinking avoids wasting time and money on efforts that could turn out to be useless and encourages a more flexible approach.

Sounds great, right? But, how can we use lean thinking principles with content marketing?

Develop a lean content strategy.

At Think Better, we regularly incorporate lean content into our marketing plans, both for clients and for our own business. Essentially, we build high-quality, targeted content that can be repurposed into many formats, many times. It’s efficient, cost-effective, and appealing to leads and customers. 

Here’s how we do it:

STEP ONE: FOCUS ON A PROBLEM YOU CAN SOLVE.

It’s important to know who you are talking to, what you’d like to say, and the outcome you’re looking for. Start off by asking yourself a few questions:

• Who is your target audience?

• What problem does your audience have that is worth it for your business to address? 

• Do you have a unique opinion, skill, or resource that could provide your target value?   

• What’s your overall objective with this campaign?

Example: Hypothetical company, ConnectivityUs, sells a software platform that helps teams collaborate remotely. They’ve identified the marketing persona they want to focus on. They want to give business leaders value by educating them on different tactics they can use to help teams stay connected while working with colleagues in different time zones and cultures. After working with hundreds of remote workers over the years, ConnectivityUs is in a unique position to offer some time-tested advice. With this content, they hope to attract new leads who are interested in a product demo.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR ORIGIN CONTENT PIECE.

Now that you know what you want to talk about and to whom, you need to decide what type of content to start with. Remember, you’ll be recycling and repurposing this content into many forms. Do you have have any upcoming events or campaigns that would respond best to a specific type of content? Or is there a format of content that your team is best at creating? This piece of “origin” content is the starting point, and as long as you’re thinking strategically about how you can re-create this content,  there’s no wrong answer. 

Example: ConnectivityUs knew that an effective form of engaging content for their target audience was a live training or webinar. This format also allows them to demonstrate their remote collaboration expertise. They created a presentation, chose a host, and advertised their training through partnerships, emails, organic social media, and LinkedIn advertising. 

STEP 3: MEASURE. REUSE. REPEAT.

Did your piece of content accomplish your original objective? What went well and what could be improved? There’s always something to learn from how your audience reacts to your efforts. If there was a part of your content that didn’t go over well, that’s okay. You can remove it or re-work it as you go. The important part is that you don’t have to start from scratch. You can still get value out of what you have already created. 

Now it’s time to re-think your content and recycle it into a new form to reach an even wider audience. Your blog post can morph into a guide, a video, an email series, or a presentation. An ebook can be transformed into an infographic, a webinar, several blog posts, or a social media campaign. The possibilities are endless.

Example: ConnectivityUs deemed their webinar a success since they had engaged attendees and received several demo requests directly from the presentation. During the webinar, they received several questions about using their platform to help connect creative teams, so they plan on incorporating more of this specific advice in future iterations of their content. They recorded their live webinar and sent the recording, along with a thank you and an invitation to do a demo, to all registrants of the webinar, whether they attended or not. 

ConnectivityUs also created a landing page for the recording that is accessible through a form to capture new leads. They sent an email out non-registrants, inviting them to watch the recording, and repurposed slides from the presentation to post on social media. They also wrote a blog post summarizing the webinar and were able to point to the recording and blog post when they talked to prospective clients. ConnectivityUs was able to use the blog post, along with several others, to create a guide. Now, their one-time webinar lives on indefinitely, providing them relevant content in diverse formats to share with their audience. 

[For tips on how to future proof your content, check out this article.]

The best type of content keeps on giving.

While content marketing is proven to work, it takes a lot of effort to create something valuable. Get the most out of your efforts by applying lean thinking. A lean content strategy will get more juice out of every drop of content, attracting leads with various formats and giving them content that’s packed with value. Test your ideas constantly, remove ideas that fail to produce favorable results, and amplify those that do.

If you need help developing or executing a lead content strategy, we’re happy to help. Schedule a meeting with us and we’ll create a plan that will work for your business. Book a consultation now.