On January 21, Scripted's Chief Revenue Officer — J.D. Peterson — and InboundWriter's CEO, Skip Besthoff, teamed up to talk about how marketers can make their articles more shareable. From discussing idea generation to debunking common content myths, the two provided actionable ways marketers can get their content ready for their readers to share today.
2. SCRIPTED.COM
Who We Are
JD Peterson, Scripted.com
SVP of Marketing
jd@scripted.com skip@inboundwriter.com
Skip Besthoff, InboundWriter
CEO
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InboundWriter – Know Before You Write
Our Vision
InboundWriter predicts content traffic performance
before the content is written, based on the topic and
target website
Our Software
To simplify creating content that engages target
audiences and drives superior performance
Industry Recognition
Our Customers
• Content Marketers: enterprises & digital agencies
• Launched in Sept ’14; approaching 50 accounts
• Commonalities: content and performance
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According to a recent report 90 percent of B2C organizations use content marketing. Yet
only 34 percent of these B2C marketers consider themselves effective.
A 66 percent failure rate might work in baseball batting averages, but boardrooms
won't tolerate this level of performance for very long.
Cold, Hard Reality - Most Content Doesn’t Work
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New Research - Performance is Driven by Topics
• ‘What’ you write about is as, or more, important than ‘how’
you write it
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A Typical Scenario
• A pet e-commerce company has a big investment in online
content (4 blogs, 1 to 2 posts / week in each)
• The company has explicit content marketing goals, mostly
focused on traffic (search, social, referral), engagement and
conversion
• It knows most content doesn’t work and is looking to improve
these metrics
• As an example, they wanted to write about: “How Pets Keep
Us Healthy”
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Guesswork is the Status Quo
• Nothing on the surface suggests this topic won’t work
• However, we know this content would not drive traffic or hit
the target audience (thus engage / convert as expected)
– People don’t search for ‘how pets keep us healthy’
– The term that will drive the most traffic to this content is ‘healthy
pets’; not aligned with the topic
• Bottom line: very low probability of success in terms of both
traffic and engagement
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Many Factors Impact Traffic and Sharing
How competitive is your website versus the
websites publishing on the same topic
Competition
Does the topic overlap with content already on the
target website
Uniqueness
Is your topic tapping into a large online audienceAudience Size
Which terms will drive traffic to that content, and
what is the relevancy of those terms to the topic
Terms / Relevancy
Is your website known for the type of content (text,
news, video, etc.) that the target audience seeks
Match to Content Types
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What To Do - Let Data Guide You
• By analyzing search / social data you can remove guesswork,
generate related topic ideas and hit your objectives
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Typical InboundWriter Case Study
• B2B Customer; ~350k pg
views / mo
• Green / Yellow outperform
Red by 4.5x (organic), 3.5x
(pg views)
• Green content – top 10
pages on the site
• G / Y vs control group
•3.2x in organic
•2.6x in pg views
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Parting Thoughts …
• Guesswork will not yield the results you seek
• Define goals (traffic, social, engagement, etc.) and
create a content strategy based off them
• “Measure twice, cut once” (i.e. research is very
important)
• Measure -> Analyze -> Refine
• Give yourself some time –
content marketing has a
significant ROI but needs 3
to 6 months to kick in (if
you’re doing it right)
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Start With Human Behavior
Inbound Marketing
“The most fundamental component to keep
in mind is that when people share content,
they are getting some sort of reward for it”
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-ways-make-content-shareable/114975/
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The Decision To Share
Inbound MarketingShould I?
How will this
reflect on me?
Does it make
me look good?
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What Makes Someone Share?
Inbound Marketing
• Positive articles are more likely to be shared
• People like to share articles that inspire a sense
of “awe”
• Sharing content is used as a way to establish
emotional connections with others
• People share content on topics that define who
they are and supports their beliefs
• People are more likely to share articles they
perceive as being from a trustworthy source
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CONTENT MYTH #2:
THE HEADLINE IS THE ONLY COPY THAT MATTERS
Content Myth #2
• 8 out of 10 people will read your
headline
• But only 2 out of 10 will read the
rest
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CONTENT MYTH #3:
PEOPLE ONLY WANT SHORT “SOUND BYTE” STYLE POSTS
Content Myth #3
• Cat pictures and short lists
do well but everyone is
doing them!
• Stand out from the crowd
by going where there is
less competition
• 16X more content created
in 2014 with <1000 words
• People like sharing,
intellectually stimulating
long-form content
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Team
• Content Manager
Volume
• 30+ pieces of content
published per month
Content Creation
Scripted Writers
In-House
20%
80%
Content Myth #4
CONTENT MYTH #4:
IT TAKES A BIG TEAM TO CREATE THIS STUFF!
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Scripted Case Study
• Speaks directly to an area of
concern for our target audience
• One of our longer posts; more
details than a standard list
• Straight-forward headline
• Use of images
• Trust builders:
• Byline with pic
• Clear branding
• Mention competition
Nicole will introduce both JD and Michael, who will go deeper into who they are and what they’ll be talking about.
Nicole will introduce both JD and Michael, who will go deeper into who they are and what they’ll be talking about.
Blog posts are the second most used tactic of content marketing. Blog posts serve many different purposes – you want to make them great.
Some marketers say the only things that matters is coming up with a good headline.
Stats from Copyblogger. Reiterate the goal of a quality blog post is to keep the reader engaged the entire time! You want them to finish it, share it, comment on it and more! A catchy headline helps, but it’s not a golden ticket.