The Sir Alex Ferguson’s way of Building the Best (Content) Team
Danny Denhard, VoucherCodes.co.uk
@dannydenhard
httpss://plus.google.com/112080127184383819662/posts
1. The team is the most important part when you’re picking content.
2. It is all about picking and having the right qualities.
3. You need a good goalkeeper in your team that is safe, has attention to detail, has great agility and protects the project.
4. You need a centre back in your team that communicates and leads the team from the front.
5. You need a Midfield workhorse in your team to do the ugly thing, to work for the team and get the best results out of you and your team.
6. You need an attacking midfield, the creative part of the team, who creates a system and communicates with people and drive the team forward in their own style.
7. You need at least one striker for every project, the PR and social media people. These will go and get you the results that you need.
8. If you don’t have a natural born leader in your team you’re going to struggle to get the right results.
9. Know when to make substitutions in order to keep it fresh and to get the best out of your people.
10. You need a substitution bench with reliable people.
11. Squad rotation helps to keep it fresh.
12. Make the project last until the final whistle – add an extra 79 seconds to every game to score!
13. You should always overachieve.
14. Concentrate on the things you want to win.
15. Concentrate on the things that are important to you.
16. Be part of the bigger picture!
17. Build a brand and your team for the bigger picture
18. Build the best team for each content project.
19. It is really important that everyone knows their goals.
20. The best players in the world don’t always work well together
21. Pick the right attributes however large or small you team is.
22. There always needs to be a leader.
23. Not all players can play every game – rest people wisely and swap them when necessary
How to Create Content People Have to Share
Laura Edwards, Nitter Natter
@LauraHelen
24. If your content is good you really don’t have to fight to get people’s attention, they will happily give it to you.
25. Sharable content requires investment.
26. Could your content provoke thought?
27. Spending too much money can be equally inefficient as spending too little.
28. Production value is clearly visible on YouTube.
29. The blog is the centre of the business model.
30. Play to your strengths.
31. Recruitment strategy is very important but not every budget allows such a move.
32. Can the team/individual working on your content meet your expectations?
33. Content takes effort.
34. Lack of preparation leads to despair.
35. Make your content relevant to your audience.
36. What are you going to bring to the conversation and what will you take away?
37. Sharing your ideas at a table with your co-workers is very important; about 80% of them are shit, 19% passable but 1% is genius.
38. Pick up on topical interests that split opinions.
39. All of us spend a lot of time willing for people to share content but the execution of sharing content is so often messed up.
40. You need to give your audience a reason to follow you.
41. People are lazy when sharing content.
42. Place share buttons near the top of articles – moving buttons can make a huge difference.
43. Think about the message you’re asking to be shared.
Developing an Editorial Mindset in a Non-Editorial Business
Dan Fielder, Sticky Content
@danfielder
44. B2B are struggling to fit their marketing into content marketing.
45. What can B2B learn from people like editors?
46. a) Find your niche and find content that fits your business.
- Find the sweet spot – the happy section between what you know and what your user needs.
- 70% of B2B buyers start the process by performing a search on Google.
- People’s appetite for information is growing.
- Think about the questions that users have.
47. b) Work your contact books.
- Look down the line and ask your team such as your customer service what the questions of your clients are.
- They may not be client facing, you have to hunt them down.
- You need to find a way to sell in the benefits of contribution to the blog.
48. c) Ideas – you need lots of them!
- Find out what are the top keywords and write content about those keywords.
- Have ideas. Lots of them.
- You need a lot of bad ideas to pull out the good one.
- Ideas come from everywhere – even interns.
- You are not the idea.
49. d) Get some momentum and keep your blog updated.
- 65% of businesses haven’t updated their blog in a year.
- Start small, get quick wins with the least amount of stakeholder involvement.
- Get some ROI and use the momentum to get sign off.
- It’s important to remember that often in B2B your audience has an audience too!
- You are often creating content for this secondary audience.
- Slice and dice and reuse assets such as blogs and articles.
- If you can’t create, curate!
- Information is what sells online.
- In our low-trust world, effective marketing is about developing relationships to build on trust and confidence.
50. Final thought – Practice random acts of content kindness, if you think it is good, out it out there.
Robots, Gumballs and Marxism
Ben Redford, Mint Digital
51. Making stuff and putting it on a blog creates an audience.
52. Even if people hate an idea of yours, they still love to talk about it.
53. Physical stuff connected to the web is awesome because people want to talk about it.
54. We are not used to screens – they haven’t been around for that long, we like to talk about things.
55. If you build something, feed your audience with little bits of info, make them ask you questions – that helps to create a community.
56. If you have a community, it can turn your product into a success.
57. Just by exposing people to the way we do things makes them follow us.
How to use LinkedIn for Content Marketing
Will Koch, LinkedIn
@willkock97
58. Decision makers use social networks which helps them in their decision making process.
59. There is 6x more content than jobs out there.
60. Don’t boil the ocean: LinkedIn will help you build a phased approach to executing Content Marketing.
61. Conversions ensue which reveal insights that inform future content/campaigns.
62. The distribution of content is targeted, what content I have – this can be taken and seeded to the right viewers.
63. LinkedIn stands out in terms of trust.
Great Content Marketing is About Great Storytelling
Tony Samios, Caliber
httpss://plus.google.com/100709668384486712687/posts
64. Great content is about great story telling
65. We are born for stories
66. There are two and a half billion people online – Social media gave us the ability to share stories in a way that we haven’t done before.
67. One to one conversations are more important than ever.
68. Consumers are less concerned about what brands have to say nowadays, they are much more concerned about what others have to say about brands.
69. The ability has arisen for the customer to tell their own story
70. Google is a sexy product – so what happens when you have to tell a less sexy story?
71. A great story is a great story and it doesn’t matter how you tell it whether on paper, voice or pixel.
72. ‘Frankly there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love after hearing their story’ – Andrew Stanton.
73. The audience wants to care about the content.
74. You need to make the effort to stand out from the crowd.
75. Storytelling can increase revenue.
76. Storytelling puts the audience at ease and makes people do crazy things.
77. Good stories can compel people to change how they feel and can compel an audience to action.
78. Stories confirm why actions are important and explain how you want the audience to react.
79. Find the right medium to tell your story.
80. Make a story funny, make it engaging.
81. If you don’t tell a good story, your message can get lost.
Content Strategy > Make Data your Friend!
Simon Penson, Zazzle Media
@simonpenson
httpss://plus.google.com/111015588015143680314/posts
82. Data is not cool but it is really useful.
83. It helps your content strategy as you don’t need to guess anymore.
84. Let the data lead you and tell you what to do.
85. It’s not just about keyword data anymore but it is still very important.
86. It gives you a good idea for potential content marketing.
87. Semantics – Broaden your reach.
88. Audience – Look at Google’s Display Network Ad Planner
89. Surveys – Google’s Consumer Surveys
90. Big Data – Zanran (does the same as Google’s public data engine).
91. Real-Time Insights finder allows you to find the right tool to find something, it helps you to understand.
92. Analytics – It has a place in content, it can validate content ideas.
93. Search data helps but the future lies in social.
94. Facebook power editor allows you to get into the nitty gritty, such as combine data and create clusters.
95. Data helps you to understand what people like, and we can then validate effectiveness and understand how stuff is working.
96. Data is the life and soul of the party.
What is the Right Mix of Content?
Sarah Howard, Red Rocket Media
@SarahGHoward
httpss://plus.google.com/105693224963868342112/posts
97. One size doesn’t fit all – what works for one business doesn’t necessarily work for another business.
98. Step One: Get to know your audience, really get to know them by looking at social media channels.
- Revisit on a regular basis.
- Look at social media channels to find out what content your audience likes to share.
99. Step Two – Give your site a content audit including taking a full content inventory and quality analysis.
- Align content with business objectives.
- Make sure you have content on-site to support the buying cycle, this includes content to nurture leads.
- Awareness – Blogs, Consideration – Newsletter, Purchase – Cold Hard Statistics.
- Google analytics is a fantastic way to measure your content.
- Key metrics to consider are whether people share your content and if they comment on your content.
100. Step 3: Content marketing is quite a subtle thing.
101. Step 4: Try it and refine it.
- Just roll with it and see how your content goes, and refine it if needed.
- As long as it is quality content there is nothing wrong with posting a couple of fresh posts in a day.
102. Step 5: Make it a company-wide exercise.
- Get all your team involved, even the sales team and IT, because they know what people ask and what they want to know, so you can deliver great content.
- Teamwork results in great content.
103. Round Up – You can build up the authority on your site with help of multiple personas.
104. Become your audience and emerge in what they like.
105. Capitalise on what works – scrap what doesn’t.
106. Get everyone involved – yes, that even means sales team.
107. Adopt a data-led content marketing strategy.
Why Multicultural Content Marketing is Key to Grow Your Business
Eric Ingrand, EnVeritasGroup
@EricEVGEurope
httpss://plus.google.com/105806361522234112970/posts
108. Multicultural marketing is not the same as multilingual marketing.
109. Put passion and care in the content you create.
110. Content created with care and passion is not received as pollution by the audience.
111. Listen to data and create a multicultural content. Personalisation is important as its showing that you are listening to the people.
112. Launching a product outside your comfort zone is also thinking outside of Google – search engine preferences change from country to country.
113. You want quality, cultural adapted content.
Selling the Content Marketing Story
Pak Hou Cheung, BlueGlass UK
@PakHouCheung
httpss://plus.google.com/105433703661909653081/posts
114. Most Businesses want to go to Google and understand how to get more traffic.
115. To rank well you have to have high quality content.
116. It is important to understand that we need the content strategy, SEO and Social Media to work together holistically.
117. At the centre of this is your brand.
118. The best marketing is where you don’t even realise you are being marketed to.
119. Know what your goal is, what is it you want to achieve?
120. When you produce infographics really think about how it relates to your brand.
121. Create valuable content that will catch your prospect’s attention.
122. Awareness is about getting your brand name out there.
123. Consideration is about knowing what problem your product or service solves.
- What differentiates your brand from competitors?
- Leverage your existing client base to help you stand out from your competitors.
- Leverage customer testimonials.
124. Purchase
- Focus on the why, inspire your audience to buy.
- Share don’t push.
- Demonstrate true value with your content.
125. Retain and Upsell
- How do you keep your clients
- Focus on the relationships
- Go the extra mile to retain customers.
- Don’t stop offering value to your customer and try to leverage, make them buy more.
- Retain the relationship with your clients by staying connected with them.
126. Valuable content is crucial in all stages of the sales cycle.
127. Content marketing is not about the quick wins, you need a long strategy to be successful.
128. You need quality, method and patience for it to pay off.
Making Video Work for Your Brand
Amanda Poole-Connor, TNR, the Press Association
@AJPooleco
129. Create content with a very clear message.
130. Video is king if you want to communicate with your audience.
131. Video – gone from a nice to have, to a must have.
132. According to YouTube more than 4 billion hours of videos are viewed each month.
133. 500 years of YouTube video are watched on Facebook every day.
134. Over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter every minute.
135. By 2016 video will account for 86% of web traffic, pages with videos will be 50% more likely to show on page one of the Google SERPS (Deborah Bates, @LittleRed_23)
136. Video can attract new customers but also build brand loyalty.
137. As part of a content strategy, a video can increase SEO, drive traffic and build trust.
138. Video has the power to engage and empower.
139. Audiences are 10 times more likely to comment on videos than on blogs.
Putting the Conversion into Content.
Justin Taylor, Graphitas
@JustinGraphitas
httpss://plus.google.com/107198809652188338961/posts
140. Tweets and Likes – Why should we expect our companies to accept these vanity metrics for payment?
141. Look beyond the shares, get conversion into content.
142. Tip 1: Define your objectives to produce better content.
- Work out what you are trying to achieve.
- Focus on where you want to be, not where you are.
143. Tip 2: Understand your audience by doing research, creating personas, talking to people and hanging out in forums.
- It isn’t rocket science but get it wrong and your content will bomb.
- Once you understand your audience, it’s easier to make them convert.
- Get it right and your audience will be putty in your hands.
144. Tip 3: Use your audiences’ language.
145. Tip 4: Concentrate on your Headlines.
- The importance of a good headline really cannot be underestimated.
- 5 times as many people read headlines as they read body content.
- A good headline can be very powerful.
146. Tip 5: Anchor products in your content.
- This has to be one of the biggest crimes in content creation.
- If someone is interested enough to read about something you can be pretty sure that he will be interested enough to buy.
147. Tip 6: Calls to action and triggers.
- Include a link for your audience so they are able to buy the product or service if they want to.
- Tell your users about your endorsements, free trials, free deliveries etc.
- A big hurdle for people ordering clothes (especially baby clothes) is returns.
- Look for propositions that really engage your audience, as this could be the trigger whether they buy or not.
148. Tip 7: Create content with visual impact.
- Make your content visually engaging and memorable.
149. Tip 9: Never stop testing
- Testing is one of those things that is such a necessary evil in the pursuit of great content.
- Don’t try to create the perfect piece of content because it doesn’t exist, but experiment with different ideas.
- Speak to people and find out what they want.
- Trends, users and competitors change and don’t stop changing.
- Testing encourages innovation and helps you to stay ahead of the game.
150. Play to win and do the best you can do to achieve the best for your client.
- If you do a great job and get great results your services will always be in demand.
Raising the Quality Bar Using the Smarter Content Framework
Matt Roberts, Linkdex
httpss://plus.google.com/102503001148073163053/posts
151. Only smart content gets shared, nobody shares average content, not even with friends, people only share exceptional content.
152. Smarter content is what we all want.
153. SMARTER content is – Specific, Measurable, Aligned/Appropriate, Relevant, Timely, Engaging, Rewarding/Reassess.
7 Content Marketing Tips for Ecommerce
Ed Bussey, Quill
@ed_bussey
154. Tip 1: Value your content.
- It is the lifeblood of your site.
- It is the core brand asset.
155. Tip 2: Define your objectives before you start writing your content.
- Get these right and it drives the basis of your editorial plan.
- Think about what your objectives are, and not about what Google wants, before you start writing.
156. Tip 3: Customers first, SEO second.
157. Tip 4: Be consistently on-brand.
- The customers are following a journey with your brand and they need to hear the same tone of voice the whole way through.
- Brand guidelines are very important.
- Different tones of voices and different styles can appear un-credible and not trustworthy to your customers.
158. Tip 5: Measure and optimise your content.
- The impact of content can be tested the same way everything else on your site is.
159. Tip 6: Don’t translate content, localise it.
- Spelling and grammar translates but the content feel cannot be translated.
- Content should be written by locals.
160. Tip 7: Use solutions that scale.
- It is important that people build content strategies that are scalable.
Advanced Content Promotion Strategies and Tactics.
Paul May, BuzzStream
@paulmay
httpss://plus.google.com/117807293300167573211/posts
161. “If you spend 40 hours creating a piece of content, you should spend 40 hours on outreach, seeding, and promotion”. by Hannah Smith, Distilled
162. The Key to Success – Outreach needs to be personalised, relevant and needs to develop a relationship.
163. Develop a system that allows you to scale outreach without sacrificing the personalisation.
164. Leverage the easier to acquire mentions and links to help get the more difficult ones.
165. Commit to relationship building prior to outreach.
166. Segment your ‘content market’ – don’t just target those adjacent to you.
167. Think big, start small.
168. Automate low-value tasks. There is no need to do that manually. If you do, you just lose time.
169. Expand using chunking which is a great tool for ideation and segmentation of markets.
170. A good tool to use for creating ideas is Google trends.
171. Great outreach emails are personalised, positioned, persuasive and call for action.
172. Start your emails talking about something that is relevant to the person you outreach to instead of, ‘I really enjoyed your blog’. You should end with flattery.
If I had a Planner – Content Planning 101
Jo Kerr, vInspired
@gambollingsylph
173. It’s important to meet face-to-face and find out what is the state of mind of your audience.
174. Align your content with business aims and try to think about the big aims not just about likes and shares.
175. Trust your editor.
176. It’s important that there is one person that is the facilitator and who can take on new ideas but also knows when to stop.
177. Plan ahead and be spontaneous.
178. Celebrate your success, but keep learning.
179. You need the whole team to contribute towards success.
180. Always improve and get better and use your audience to advise you on content.
How to Grow Social Media Communities
Luke Lewis, BuzzFeed
@lukelewis
181. Create adverbs that are enjoyable and shareable.
182. Know what your objectives are to find out what platform you want to use for your content.
183. 6 Tips for twitter:
- Be relentless
- Use photos
- If it worked once, tweet it again – not many people actually do that
- Tweet your greatest hits – if it is timeless you can tweet it again and again
- Use analytics
- And be geeky!
184. Exploit big events and react in real time.
185. Use planned spontaneity and have, for example, a back up story if the outcome could be different than expected.
186. Tap into people’s passions.
187. Take the interaction with your audience and make something really creative out of it.
