Preach: Inbound, inbound, inbound!
At its simplest, my approach to content marketing breaks down to:
- Attract: Using authentic storytelling that resonates with a target audience and is in line with industry research. Be captivating and credible.
- Convert: Give our target audience an “aha!” moment. In B2B, perhaps it’s a “hey, that helps me do my job better!” In B2C, perhaps it’s “hey, that speaks to my lifestyle and I can relate to that!”
- Close: Continue to offer value to the point where our audience can’t live without us; a seamless handoff to sales having planted the seeds of a brand advocate.
- Delight: Continue to offer value that our clients didn’t expect. During the sales cycle we talked the talk. Now it’s time to walk the walk.
Here’s an example of how I might think of all the ways to use an industry report as a jumping-off point for creating loads of useful content to fuel a great integrated campaign:
Some of my tools for content planning and creation:
- A Trusty Map: A comprehensive library of what we have and what we need, organized so I can track content by media formats, topics, personas, verticals, customer lifecycle stages, the subject-matter experts involved, etc.
- A Calendar: A living, breathing entity all its own that syncs content production, updates, and integrated campaign schedules with quarterly/monthly lead gen drivers, product launches, events, webinars, industry news and trends, etc.
- A Workflow: An efficient system that streamlines content management, offering equal parts visibility and ease of use.
- A Sense of Adventure: Content curation is all about the ability to recycle, revitalize, repurpose, and think outside our walls; otherwise known as “doing more with less” as shown in the graphic above.
Spencer Czapiewski 