A presentation by David Somerville, head of social media at Fresh Egg, given at the 2013 Brighton Digital Marketing Festival. The presentation covers the five different stages of the content cycle, with the aim of helping you plan, implement, measure and improve upon the success of your content marketing strategy. These five stages are: - Discovery – an investigation stage to guide your content strategy and campaigns - Planning and setup – a stage that ensures your content is well thought-out and designed to meet specific objectives - Execution – creating your content and promoting it - Reporting, analysis and insight – measuring what has happened as a result of your content campaigns - Refinement – learning from your reporting and feeding back into planning and setup to help guide future campaigns

1. The Content Cycle.
Brighton Digital Marketing Festival 2013.
David Somerville, Fresh Egg.

2. • David Somerville
(@southcoastdavid)
• Head of social media at Fresh Egg
• Work with clients such as
Confused.com, Maplin, Vodafone
Australia, Adecco
• Previously spent over 4 years as
online content manager for Friday
Media Group
About me

3. The ‘good old days’ of content.
The Content Cycle.

4. Source: http://glennobrien.com/?p=274

5. Good old days? BAD old days!

6. There was a lot of crap out there!

7. Low-quality websites were hit, especially ‘content farms’
Then this happened...
Source: saffronweb.com

8. And then this happened…
Source: blog.bringshare.com
Low-quality article marketing and blog spam hit

9. • Everyone went content crazy (especially SEOs!)
• ‘Content marketing’ became the new buzzphrase
• Content moved more away from automation and only written text
• There was an underlying shift in reason WHY content was written
…and the content landscape changed dramatically

10. Content now needs to be better and content producers smarter

11. What is ‘content’?

12. The Content Cycle.
The Content Cycle.

13. • A process of helping to plan and implement your content strategy
• Makes you focus on objectives and audiences
• Allows you to report fully on your content production and help
justify ROI
• Five different related stages…
What is the Content Cycle?

14. The Content Cycle

15. An ‘investigation’ stage to ensure you have your content
fundamentals in place – guides your content strategy and campaigns
Discovery

16. Audit your current content (and website) and build a SWOT.
• Technical limitations – crawlable, multi-device accessible
• Content structure – layout for UX, editorial standards, internal
linking
• User metrics and conversions – what does the site traffic tell you?
• Resources – who is doing it and who could do it?
• Competitors – what are they doing well and not so well?
Content audit

17. Producing content for the right audience is crucial, so make sure you
know exactly who they are by:
• Using any demographic data you have access to
(Hitwise, Mosaic, CRM data, email lists, social media network
insights, etc.)
• Building personas for different audience groups
• Including their motivations for wanting to view your content
Audience personas

18. Social Crawlytics scans your website (or your competitor’s) to show
the level of social shares it receives
Use this to see the most popular pages and produce more of this
content
Socially popular content – Social Crawlytics

19. An often overlooked and underused resource…
TIP: this does need to be configured first in Google Analytics
Google Analytics Site Search

20. Find experts and influencers from within your company (or industry)
– use them for ideas and their authority…
Experts and Authorship

21. Find any offline content and repurpose it digitally
Repurposing content
Source: displaydevelopments.co.uk

22. Planning & Setup
Use this stage to ensure that your content campaigns are well
thought-out and have purpose

23. It is important to consider what role the content you are writing plays
in each stage of the customer journey…
This backs up your ‘audience’ work in the discovery stage
Content and the customer journey

24. What content channel fits which stage?
Content and the customer journey
Search, social
networks, blogs
, PR
Your
website, blog,
interactive
tools
Ecommerce
process on
site, email

25. Why are you producing this content?
Setting clearly defined OBJECTIVES is vital to the planning and success
of a campaign
How are you going to measure the success of this content?
Each content campaign needs to have measureable KPIs to help with
reporting – these will help show if you have achieved your
OBJECTIVES
Objectives and KPIs

26. Q&A sites
Keyword suggest
Tools to generate content ideas

27. News monitoring
Alerts
Tools to generate content ideas

28. Social tools
Tools to generate content ideas

29. The tighter, better and more detailed your brief, the better content
you will produce (or have produced for you)
Briefs

30. Use ‘fag packet
wireframes’ to help guide
designers and content
producers about what
you want to see
These can also guide the
content writer to see how
they content will appear
in the context of the page
Wireframes

31. For each campaign, ensure that everyone knows their responsibilities
Responsibilities
Source: fitfanempire.com

32. The rise of multiple devices means that CONTEXT is key
Different environments
Source: www.mashable.com

33. Different environments

34. Execution
The ‘doing’ stage – producing your content and promoting it

35. Basic content optimisation tips

36. Content promotion

37. Content promotion

38. Influencers…
Influencers vs. brand advocates
Source: hiphopweekly.com
Big hitter, short-term loyalty, questionable motivation

39. Brand advocates…
Loyal, passionate and long-lasting
Influencers vs. brand advocates
Sources: oprah.com, youtube.com, glamourvanity.com

40. Influencers vs. brand advocates
Measure Influencer Brand advocates
Consumer trust 18% of people trust
influencers
92% of people trust brand
advocates
Typical profile Blogger, journalist,
pundit/celebrity
Highly satisfied customer
Defined by Size of audience How likely they are to
recommend brand
Motivation Grow their audience Help their friends
Advocacy and loyalty Short term Long lasting
Genuine passion Maybe Yes
Incentives needed Typically yes (money, free
products, etc.)
Typically no

41. Make it easy for people to share and it will spread further
Make it shareable

42. Reporting, Analysis & Insight
This stage is for reporting on what has happened as a result of your
content campaigns

43. A few examples of metrics:
• Links (who is linking to your content)
• Reach (eyeballs)
• Social reach
• Brand mentions and sentiment
• Google Analytics metrics (traffic, time on site, etc.)
• Conversions and assisted conversions
What metrics can you report on?

44. Metrics
Visitors, inboun
d links
Time on
page, social
shares
Conversions
(macro and
micro goals)

45. Link metrics – Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO
Visibility – Searchmetrics, Google Webmaster Tools
Impressions – Google Webmaster tools, tracking pixels
Social reach – Social Crawlytics, Shared Count
Brand or sentiment measurement – Social Mention, Brandwatch
Tools to help measure

46. Use the Google UTM tag and add this to all links you’re using to
promote your content.
• Specify the SOURCE (the place) and the MEDIUM (the method)
• Make sure you keep the CAMPAIGN NAME consistent
• Check the results of the campaign in Google Analytics
Tag your content

47. Refinement
The final stage – feeding back into Planning & Setup or Execution to
help guide future campaigns

48. • What worked? What didn’t?
• Ask users for feedback on content – what do your social media and
onsite comments tell you?
• Did it meet your objectives?
• Combine your metrics with testing and feedback this learning into
the planning and setup stage
Refinement

49. Key takeaways.
The Content Cycle.

50. • Content comes in many forms – think beyond just text
(and beyond desktop)
• Focus on your objectives and your audience – why are
you producing the content and for who?
• Discover > Plan > Execute > Report > Refine
• RINSE AND REPEAT!
Key takeaways

51. FreshEgg.com
@southcoastdavid
@FreshEgg
Slides available at: FreshEgg.com/Blog
The end