What do you think content marketing is going to be like in 10 years time? It’s difficult to predict. But we can make our best guesses. And we’ll probably be more correct than studying tea leaves or peering into a crystal ball. After speaking to a few experts in the fields, they expect content marketing to grow and mature over the next decade. This means better content, better technology and you being in high-demand if you’re ahead of these trends.

Trends

Much bigger content marketing budgets

As we’ve seen year after year, content marketing budgets have continued to rise. 71% of brands plan to increase the content marketing budget in 2013 according to a survey by Econsultancy and Responsys. As content marketing provides so much value I think we’re going to see that trend continue for many years to come.

More insourcing. Everyone contributing.

The most mature content marketers already understand the importance of insourcing content. By empowering every employee to write for you, you can create large amounts of expert-level content, cost-effectively. Examples include Zendesk, and US Waterproofing who rose quickly through Google by insourcing all their content.

Longer form, richer content

“It’s a bit old-fashioned now to just have an article.” says Sharon Flaherty, head of Content and PR at Confused.com. “People expect their content to be a bit more interactive these days so sometimes we use multimedia to add value to a piece of content, or an article.”

As time goes on, content marketers like us are going to make content richer and richer. More pictures. More video. We’re going to put more value into every article.

Content will bleed into parts of paid marketing

Related-content engine Outbrain is the perfect example of how content marketing can spill into paid marketing. Instead of using ads which turn people off, the platform offers relevant  articles, and companies pay for that traffic. I reckon that trend will continue. Ads will become more than just sales messages. Online adverts will have to offer valuable content worth clicking on.

Technology

Better Content Management Systems means more content competition

“In 10 years time, CMS will have evolved to be content production and distribution platforms.” says Steve Parks, Managing Director at Wunderroot.

 “On the production side there will be user-friendly development of text, audio, image, data or video content. On the distribution side there will be quick, easy and templated repurposing of the content to different platforms – from web to mobile to TV or even print systems. This approach will provide better flexibility and future proofing. The CMS will provide better integration with other systems.”

“But above all, in ten years time, most content systems will be open source.”

If content systems are easier to use, and more integrated, content creation will be easier. Presumably, less tech-savvy people will have content-rich websites, and there’ll be more content competing out there.

More widespread and more mature marketing automation

“As marketing automation becomes more widely understood, it will be purchased by less sophisticated companies.” says marketing technologist David Raab at Raab Associates.

In a decade’s time, marketing automation will be much more widespread and widely understood. So there’ll be lots more opportunities for consultants who can install marketing automation systems.

As for the more mature marketers, marketing automation will be much more sophisticated. This will mean sending content based on insights from big data, and creating ultra-personalised sites according to cloud consultancy firm, Traction.

Better analytics. We’ll know the true value of content.

Analytics software will only get better over the next decade. I think there’s going to be a greater emphasis on tracking consumers and how they interact with content. How much did that one article contribute to a buying decision? What about that video they watched on Youtube? Or the white-paper they read?

We’ll be able to use complex algorithms which can give us a dollar value for every piece of content. The closer we get to that stage, the more we can justify content marketing budgets.

People in content marketing

The rise of the content superstar

As audiences and companies become hungrier for really valuable content, there’ll be a huge premium attached to people who can consistently create excellent content. I think it will evolve to the stage where great content creators become known as real superstars.

Copywriters with powerful imaginations like Barry Feldman would fall into this category. As would somebody like Marcus Taylor who know how to leverage big brand’s audiences with content. He talked about it at this Distilled meetup (scroll half way down that article to read about how he got retweeted by EMI and other big brands).

The death of content mills

High quality content isn’t going to come from an sweatshop writer working for peanuts. As Google becomes more and more sophisticated, it’s going to eliminate articles of little value, because there’ll be so much more high-quality content competing. That means the death of the content mill, in my opinion. At least the ultra-cheap, ultra-poor-quality content mills.

Computers will write data-driven articles

Automated Insights are a company which get computers to write articles. Things like sports reports, house-prices changes, can all be written by a computer because it’s just reading data and formulating that into an article. Publishers will buy-in this software as it’ll be cheaper than employing a young hack.

The rise of marketing technologists

“Within 10 years, I expect that marketing technology should be fully assimilated into marketing.” says Scott Brinker known for his Chief Marketing Technologist blog. “There really won’t be any aspect of marketing that isn’t powered by some kind of software. We’ll go through some awkward teenage years first to find our identity as technology-powered marketers, but by 2023, I believe we’ll be past the angst of that transformation.”

Scott also believes there will be 3 types of marketers in the future depending on their technical ability.

“1. Effectively everyone in marketing will be technically savvy, at least to the degree of being able to apply technology in smart ways throughout their day-to-day activities.”

“2. There will be a role for the ‘master coordinator of marketing technology,’ which I believe will report primarily into the marketing department. This role could go by many names.”

“3. Then there will be many marketing technology specialists with engineering backgrounds who will wield code and data to help create remarkable customer experiences.”

The rise of hybrid marketers

At present there’s huge demand for people who have well-rounded marketing skills, and this demand will grow immensely with more technology. If you’ve got different skills, from different parts of marketing, you can do a job which previously required lots of different people. PR 20/20 coined the term hybrid marketers:

Hybrid marketing professionals are trained to deliver services across search, mobile, social, content, analytics, web, PR, and email marketing. They provide integrated solutions that used to require multiple agencies and consultants.

They have excellent eBook on the rise of hybrid marketers and how these people will be in intense demand over the coming years.

What does all this mean for you?

Will those things happen? I don’t know. Things could change beyond all recognition. But it wouldn’t be surprising if many of these predictions did come true.

In terms of your career, specialisation seems the way to go. At the moment content marketing seems to be a big tangle. But in 2023 we’ll have seen more specialisation. At that point, maybe you’ll be a content insourcing consultant? A content superstar? A martec brainiac? A hybrid marketer? Maybe you own, or will own a business in one of these areas?

Whatever you end up doing, the value of content marketing is phenomenal, but it feels like its value isn’t fully understood yet. At present, I reckon we’re only at the tip of the iceberg.

What do you think? What do you think content marketing will be like in 10 years time? Would you disagree with any of these thoughts? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!

photo credit: seanmcgrath via photopin cc
photo credit: Daniel Pascoal via photopin cc
photo credit: Search Engine People Blog via photopin cc
photo credit: Fr Antunes via photopin cc

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A white paper is a bit like a conveyor belt. It moves people along from the uneducated, unaware stage to the sell-me-your-stuff-now stage. If you’re a B2B marketer, a white paper is a usually a must. Who should write them though? You? Your sales guys? A copywriter? Well… it depends on your time and budget.

Your sales team

Your sales people are definitely the best-placed people to write your white papers. They explain things every day. They deal with everyone from industry experts, to people who know nothing. They explain. Explain. And Explain. Because if a prospect doesn’t understand the problem and solution, then they certainly won’t be buying your product.

Salespeople can describe problems in the language prospects use. They’ll try to explain things without jargon, and in ways people understand.

If you ask these guys to write a white paper they could come up with excuses. They may not be very confident writing. Time spent writing is time they could be spend pounding the pavements, and on the phone.

On the other hand, you could interview one of sales guys, record it, then hire someone to transcribe it.

Then with that information you can edit that interview into a white paper. This is the most time-efficient way of doing it (for the sales people).

You (as a marketer)

If you’re confident as an editor, turning messy copy into a document which flows well, then you can put it together as a marketer.

If you have the time and the skills, then you should put it together. But if you haven’t, then you might want to get freelance copywriters and editors involved.

Freelance technical copywriter

If you need extra time you may want to hire a freelance editor and/or copywriter to put it together and make sure your content flows well. Look for someone who knows your industry well. Especially if you’re in a very technical industry (think medical research, industrial machinery, corporate accountancy).

If someone who’s worked in similar industries to your own, they’ll know the ins and outs. The specialist terminology. They’ll try and get into the mindset of a buyer, when they write it. So they’re likely to do write well.

Maybe a mix of all three

You’ll definitely want input from your sales guys. Then you may want to edit their inputs yourself, or hire a freelance writer to tidy it up. It all depends on who has the skills, time and resources.

It also depends on budgets. Transcription services aren’t too expensive. But hiring industry-specific writers and editors could become costly, if you rely on them too much.

Then again, if you’re in a B2B business, the value of your white-paper is going to be very high. It will generate high-quality leads and works fantastically as a sales aid. So you can definitely justify your investment in it.

[Image courtesy of Bikerock]

The post Who should write my white paper? appeared first on Content Marketing, Virally Blog.

First of all you will need to name your campaign

Then upload your file.

Then promote your file with the links provided.

It’s that easy.

The post How to use the new campaign wizard in Virally appeared first on Content Marketing, Virally Blog.

Both share your content with social networks

The idea behind Pay with a Tweet and Virally is viral sharing. Lets say you have an ebook you want to get it to as many people as possible. Then you’d use Virally or PWAT to let people share your content.

We both get people to make social network updates. Like the one below.

But Virally is more focused on marketers and businesses

In short, Virally is focused on marketers. And therefore has more features. We designed it for people who use their ebooks (and other valuable content) as a marketing tool.

Virally captures your leads, so you can nurture them into customers.

Virally isn’t just sharing buttons. Its a lead capturer as well. It gets more information from the person involved. Name. Email. Location. Downloads. A picture. E.g. This is what we know about Liam from his download history.

You can use this information to nurture your leads. As part of Virally’s T&Cs, your downloaders give permission to receive your emails. With your email marketing campaigns you can nurture them into buying your services over time.

Analytics and measurement

At present Pay With a Tweet don’t seem to trace how many people download your content. Whereas Virally will tell you how many people downloaded the content. Your total reach. Total visitors, and conversion rate of your landing pages. You will know how effective your campaign has been.

 Virally will also tell you who the most powerful influencers are in your network. Whose tweets are bringing the most traffic? Who should you outreach to? This information will help you identify your key influencers.

Integrations into Mailchimp and Salesforce

Virally integrates into Mailchimp and we’re planning more integrations with other email platforms over time. This means all the leads you generate automatically transfer into these applications.

With this we’ve seen our email list grow and grow and grow from the content we’ve published. Automatically.

Non-compulsory sharing (so you don’t put people off)

Sometimes people refuse to download something if they’re forced to make an update.

Maybe the content was something they wanted to keep private. Maybe it was something which they didn’t want to bother their followers with. So they refuse to download it.

We’ve found that conversion rates, and total downloads are higher when status updates are optional. So we’ve built optional sharing. See below.

Should you use Virally or Pay With a Tweet?

Pay With a Tweet is very good. It’s simple. And to be honest, we’re a bit jealous of the fact  ~4,000,000 people have used the platform. You should use Pay With a Tweet if you’re looking for a basic “viral sharing button”.

However, if you’re a marketer or small business, Virally’s is more suited for you because it’s more than a sharing button. Its a lead capturer. It gives you information, analytics & insights into your leads. It integrates into your email marketing, so you can nurture your leads into buying.

It also integrates into your CRM systems, so you can track your leads from the moment they download something, to the moment they buy from you. This means you can track the ROI of your content and the sales that it helped generate.

If you’re a marketer, Virally helps you prove your ROI and the value your work adds. It means that you can justify your spending, and expand your content marketing budgets to make even more sales in future.

The post Pay With a Tweet vs. Virally appeared first on Content Marketing, Virally Blog.

In terms of marketing case studies, they don’t get much better than this. Hargreaves Lansdown built a £4 billion financial services company with content marketing and marketing automation. There’s a lot they can teach us about how to nail your content marketing.

Marketing is the engine of your business

There are loads of good products and services out there. But what makes the difference between average companies, and those worth billions? It’s the sales and marketing. Without a doubt.

1. Dominate a profitable niche

Hargreaves Lansdown have dominated a very profitable marketplace – investment products. To be more specific, self-service investment products. It’s a very profitable niche, and they’ve absolutely decimated their market.

There are very few companies that even come close to making the amount of content that HL offer.

2. Explain complex issues

Financial services is a naturally befuddling industry. Most people don’t really have a clue about their finances, where they should invest and what they should do. They’re busy.

If you look at HL’s content they explain complex financial products very simply. They tell you what need to know. All your options. And help you make your own decisions.

3. Nail your content marketing

The killer part of HL’s approach to marketing is the sheer amount of high-quality content they produce. They have guides for people wanting to save tax on their investments. They have blogs telling you about the lastest financial news. They have videos interviewing fund managers. Their content is very very rich and valuable.

They’ve also completely nailed a lot of the online paid advertising. They’ve got ads on the side of financial sites such as lse.co.uk to attract leads. They use Outbrain to attract casual readers to their blog, and to the top of their sales funnel. They know what they’re doing.

4. Measure everything

The hallmark of any good marketing team is the way they measure things. How much traffic did a single blog post generate? How many people downloaded a guide? I haven’t been able to get in touch with the HL marketing team, but they certainly will have measured everything.

Did you overpay for that advert? How much are leads costing to generate?

It’s a constant process of optimisation. The more you measure it, A/B test it, and optimise, the cheaper leads will become, and more people will convert.

5. Thought leadership

Your thought leadership is your state when you’re so good at something, people are coming to you for your opinions. If you look at the amount of press coverage HL have, they’ve nailed their PR. They’ve got so much thought-leadership. There are so few public figures who can explain things in that marketplace, that journalists don’t tend to go anywhere else.

It’s the same for their customers. People will always look towards HL to guide them. Even if it’s not the best advice, people will keep going back to them because it’s a trusted company they know.

6. Marketing automation

I downloaded one guide from Hargreaves Lansdown, a few months ago. Now I get their monthly investment magazine. I also get letters from them. I also get their emails.

If you automate your marketing so that you keep feeding relevant content to your audience, you’re onto a winner. Even if someone doesn’t become a customer for 10 years, if they’ve known about you for a long time, they’ll eventually convert. And when they do, they’re likely to be a very high-value, loyal customer.

Surely, there’s more to it than that?

If creating a billion pound business was easy as reading these 6 tips, you’d quit your job and go and set up your own business tomorrow.

The above tips are just the theory.

But the valuable part is the execution. Time. Money. Patience. Content ideas. Selling a product people want. Running the day to day business. And hitting your content marketing out the park. And that’s not easy.

But, if you can do that, there’s no reason why you can’t make a billion pound business, like Hargreaves Lansdown.

[Image courtesy of @Doug88888]

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If you’ve got pockets brimming full of cash – it’ll buy you a lot of ad-space. But if you’re just going to blindly throw it at content marketing, it probably won’t work.

Why? Because successful content marketing isn’t about money or budgets. It’s about love. Passion. Usefulness. People who create great content, really care about solving problems. They care about what they do. They love their jobs. They love their niche like a groundskeeper loves his stately manor.

Big budget content marketers aren’t doing as well as their budget would suggest

Although the likes of Pepsi and Coke have spent millions on their content marketing, much of their content isn’t popular. With a mere handful of “likes” and minimal traffic. Why? Because it seems they’ve thrown money at content marketing but have forgot about the audience. There’s too much brand-centric content. Things like new Coca Cola glasses, making art from Coke bottles and Coca Cola discusses growth prospects. Equally Pepsi’s site talks about the brand “Live for now” and retweets stuff. But there’s not much else.

To be fair they have made some really awesome content, like Coca-Cola’s polar bear film which has attracted over 1.8 million views on youtube. Similarly some of their articles are fantastic, e.g. How social media is changing the way we find jobs. That stuff has been produced by incredible creative minds who can make impressive videos, and give awesome advice.

Who creates the best content?

In a B2B situation, the best content comes from experts, hands-down. These are the people who are doing something day-in-day-out. They understand your client’s problems. They know everything there is about your industry. They are clever. The problem is they’re probably pushed for time.

Realistically, the best content out there, comes from the experts who you employ. They are the superstars who will deliver mind-boggling amounts of value to readers and clients.

In a B2C situation where you’re transitioning from old media, TV-centric ads… to content marketing. Empower your creative people to make incredible things. Unlike TV ads, there’s no limit on amount of content that can be produced. Create. Create. Create and if it flops so what. Get your best people, who love what they do, to produce fun stuff.

So how do you get lots of that high quality content? Insource.

After talking to people for our report (The State of Content Marketing 2013), the most mature content marketers had a content marketing culture. They insourced, instead of outsourced.

They got everyone in a company to contribute an article once a month. That way, content creation wasn’t a burden, it was a joy. And there were so many different perspectives, that the company was creating skip-loads of amazing content, all the time.

What can you do?

If you’re in a marketing department, why not send out an email asking people to contribute?

If you work in company where the value of people’s time is very high, you could get them to talk on a dictaphone. Then pass the transcription and article writing, to a professional editor or a secretary.

You could also host a small workshop to begin insourcing, like US Waterproofing did. They got all (50+) of their employees creating content. Before long, they rose to the top of their niche.

If you can infuse more love, expertise and empathy into your content marketing – then you’ll get more, higher quality content. 

The post Stellar content marketing comes with love, not money appeared first on Content Marketing, Virally Blog.

So you’ve created some valuable content. An ebook or white-paper which has taken eons to put together, and plenty of money as well. What now? How do you turn it into a lean, mean, lead-generating machine?

The best approach depends on how much money you are willing to spend and your social media reach.

PPC advertising with a landing page

First and foremost, the best way of generating leads through your content is through PPC advertising. Targeting people with search queries looking for information. Hand these people your valuable content on a plate.

You could wait for your content to get a high, organic, search listing. But by which time, your content may be out of date. PPC is the most cost-effective and time-effective way of getting the leads you need.

When I was working for a financial advice firm, I put together a guide “5 ways to improve your pension”. I had a minuscule budget of £100 to spend on PPC advertising. That generated 12 leads from PPC in total. £8.50 a lead, which is very cheap. Especially for the financial services industry.

Because I had a limited budget, I was targeting less-frequent, low-competition keywords. And I honed it down, to make it as cost-effective as possible.

If you had a larger budget, I suspect the cost of leads would be higher because the competition is much higher. However, you would be able to generate many more leads than I was able to.

Once you know the value of new leads, run a PPC campaign. Track which keywords convert the best. And if certain keywords and ads are too expensive, scrap them.

Other advertising channels

You may want to look at other advertising channels outside of paid search advertising. This may include advertising on relevant industry sites and trade publication websites. You may be able to work with these sites on a Pay-Per-Lead basis. Or you could buy banner ads, but these will need close monitoring to see how well these are converting people into leads.

Similarly, companies like Dianomi act as a middle man, which advertise on your behalf and will charge you per lead generated.

Social media (if you have the audience)

If you have social media accounts for your business – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook – you should seed your content there. In effect, these are free leads.

Chances are, however, that you probably don’t have a very large audience. Even then, that’s no guarantee that many of them will download your new valuable content.

Do make the most of social media, but don’t be too reliant on it.

Viral downloads

Your content may have a viral coefficient. This is where people have shared your content and then their friends downloaded it.

Our stats at Virally say that on average you get an extra 15% of leads through social sharing.

The viral coefficient of your content depends enormously on the “hotness” of your topic. Maybe a new law comes out and you create a report on how to deal with it. Maybe you take a controversial stance on a issue. Hot topics have the largest viral coefficient.

The viral element isn’t part of the seed. The viral part is the growth. But it worth bearing in mind the value of the virality.

Summary

Writing your valuable content is only half the battle with content marketing. Generating leads from it is just as tricky. With a PPC campaign you can get your content to the largest audience.  Then you can try other advertising channels (if you’ve got the time to experiment). Remember to share it on social networks as well. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get the maximum leads and value from your valuable content.

[Image courtesy of _sjg_]

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When marketers talk TOFu, there’s a pretty good chance they’re not referring to that vegetarian protein. They’re talking about Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFu) content, information that’s mapped to the interests and needs of prospects who have just started looking for a solution.

96% of first-time visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy your product or service. They’re just looking for answers, which is why you need free content offers. They download your eBook, you nurture them into customers, and everyone goes home happy. Read on to learn some of the ways you can ensure your TOFu is unusually delicious.

1. Know Your Objective

Your content offer won’t generate downloads, shares, or intrigued leads if it doesn’t map a clear solution that matters to your prospects. Before you get started, make sure your TOFu maps a clear solution for your prospects that’s also related to your products or services. The example below, from eCommerce vendor King of Pork, highlights how their prospects can use their barbeque contraptions to reach delicious ends:

Image credit: King of Pork

2. Pick the Right Format

Not every content offer you publish needs to be a 5,000-word eBook. There are no laws in the world of Internet marketing, and the resulting product will be better if you’re slightly flexible about how you approach the topic. eBooks are grand, but so are checklists, white papers, tutorials, and templates. It’s better to write a short offer that perfectly captures a smaller topic than pad it out into a longer eBook.

3. Curate and Repurpose

Quality content creation is incredibly time-consuming, so feel free to look back through your blog archives to figure out whether there’s anything you can repurpose. It’s not plagiarism if you retain the original ownership of the content. Make sure it’s fresh enough to appeal to long-time blog readers and leads hanging out towards the middle or the bottom of your funnel, and give yourself permission to take a rare shortcut.

4. Edit and Edit Again

We all make mistakes. But it’s much harder to edit a PDF file than it is a blog post. Have a friend or co-worker take a second look at your copy before you move into the design phase, or leave the project alone for a while before you take a second look.

5. Include Images and Visuals

Your content offer needs to have some serious visual appeal if it’s going to resonate among your prospects. Enhance your pages with appealing images. It’s a wise move for custom, branded content of any length; and research by Nabisco indicates that images are processed by the human brain 60,000 times faster than text.

6. Spotlight Your Author

People want to buy products from other humans, not faceless, cold vending machines or corporations. Take time to spotlight your eBook creator (or team, if it was a company-wide effort) by dedicating a page at the beginning or end. Additionally, as Pamela Vaughan of HubSpot points out, knowing that they’ll receive recognition could motivate more employees at your company to create eBooks and offers!

7. Include a Table of Contents

You’re the best judge of whether or not you need a table of contents for your prospects to stay organized and on track. Depending on your design chops, you may be able to hyperlink  the sections listed to improve the user experience.

8. Encourage Social Sharing

Just in case it wasn’t apparent, make sure your new leads have every opportunity to share your eBook if they’re so inclined. Your content should be wondrous enough to inspire shares, so make sure you’ve enabled one-click ways for them to connect with your company on Twitter and Facebook, or share the content within their network.

9. Have a Killer Headline

Your title needs to have enough broad appeal to capture the interest of as many buyer personas as possible. It needs to stand out in their email inboxes, or catch their eye as soon as they hit your home page. Journalist-turned-content creator Brianne Carlon recommends applying the following attributes to your TOFu titles:

• Give Away Your Secrets: Your title needs to clearly explain what’s waiting between the pages if they choose to download your offer. Emphasize value and be descriptive.
• Don’t Use Big Words: Your title shouldn’t alienate anyone. Don’t use language that only appeals to a certain segment of your buyer personas.
• Focus on the Solution: Your buyer personas came to your website in the first place because they have a problem. Relay how you can help them in your title, like How You Can Triple Your Facebook Engagement.

10. Promote and Promote Again

If your shiny new eBook is a secret to any of your fans or followers, you’re not promoting it hard enough. Spotlight your hard work on your blog and in social media. You’ve earned every bit of recognition!

Writing content that is compelling enough to convince prospects to trade their email addresses for your offer is no easy feat in an era where they encounter 5,000 marketing messages a day. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the process, too—what do you think are the most important criteria of Top-of-the-Funnel offers?

[image courtesy of Piyachok Thawornmat/Freedigitalphotos.net]

The post 10 Features of Tasty TOFu (Top of the Funnel) Content appeared first on Content Marketing, Virally Blog.

I want to be honest with you. By reading this post you’re now part of an experiment  An experiment designed to test a hypothesis. So in the spirit of transparency, I’ll tell you what it is:

Marketers, publishers and entrepreneurs would like to spend less time producing valuable content while still achieving the same outcomes.

If that is true and there is a painpoint, requirement, demand, I have a solution that makes solves it. I’m going to explain, explore, discover Lean Content Marketing and how to apply it to your own business. Starting with a blog post. A short blog post too. Which may or may not grow into a larger blog post, or a blog post series – depending on how you, the reader, engage with this first experiment.

What Is “Lean”?

Lean is the concept of iteratively, methodically and scientifically executing a process to produce a product that fits the market demand, in less time and using less resources than would have otherwise been spent.

Ouch. I’m not sure if that’s a dictionary definition, but it’s the most formal way I’ve ever explained Lean. Sounds complicated, but it isn’t.

The reason why Lean is popular and well known is thanks to a few successful entrepreneurs & authors, specifically Eric Ries with his ‘The Lean Startup‘ book which chronicles his Lean approach as co-founder and CTO of IMVU and how it helped to build a company with annualised revenues of $40million.

Side Note: People keep confusing “The Lean Startup” with “Lean”, which dates back to the 80′s when Toyota’s car manufacturing principles were analysed in detail. However the effect is a positive one: People are now embracing how Lean principles and exploring how they can be applied to other business functions, and thats a good thing.

What Is Lean Content Marketing?

We should approach Lean with the following goals:

• Always have a valid hypothesis that can proven true or false
• Always define an experiment that requires the least resources an effort to successfully test the hypothesis
• Always produce each product/experiment using agile development methodologies
• Test very early and very often

And more specifically, we should approach Lean Content Marketing with the following goals:

• Always have one specific pain point that your content is trying to solve
• Always define benchmarks which will be the point of reference for proving the painpoint as valid or not
• Always start small – tweets or blog posts, before moving to higher investment content formats
• Always publish content following an 80/20 principle, and iterate on each piece of published content over time. Don’t be afraid to publish a 250 word blog post before editing it and building it into a 1,000 word post

Following these simple rules and applying them to each individual piece of content will result in a more efficient content production output, that fits with your audience’s needs.

Overall, each piece of content should start to:

• Get more tweets, likes, stumbles, shares
• Get more comments if a post
• Get more downloads if a PDF or other valuable content format
• Produce more follow up enquiries or conversions (Advanced)

That’s great for each piece of content, but how about for the overall content strategy?

How To Apply Lean Content Marketing to A Wider Content Strategy

Have you been asked to produce a 3, 6, 12, 24 month content strategy and content schedule? Quick answer to make this Lean: forget the schedule, keep the strategy strategic and leave tactical in it’s place.

A 6 month content strategy should not be thinking about the types of content you’ll be producing, or specific titles of content. I keep seeing marketers, even senior marketers, allowing tactical considerations to creep into their strategy documents.

The really smart marketers don’t even have strategy documents – they have manifestos, guiding principles, commandments. Write them on a wall. On an intranet. Make them colourful. bring them alive. Do whatever you need to do with the format to help avoid management or other colleagues from confusing tactical with your Lean Content Marketing Strategy.

A 6 month strategy should contain statements about what you want to achieve. What you want to get out of it. What you want your customers and audience to get out of it. You should discuss the Lean methodologies you’ll be using, and you can discuss some of the assumptions you currently have about your audience and their needs which might be solved through content. But leave out the tactical. That’s not very strategic.

The Lean way to produce a Content Strategy is to review, rebuild and redesign the strategy on a monthly and quarterly basis.

Summary and What Next?

I’ll get a warm feeling if you take the next steps after reading this post:

1. Review your content strategy and see how Lean it currently is
2. Review your process for executing your strategy and see if you can construct a Lean approach to the next content you produce
3. Post a comment on this post discussing where you think Lean fits into Content Marketing
4. Tweet this post if you think it was valuable to you: if it gets over a certain number of tweets, I’ll be building this out into a post series, guide, webinar, book etc. depending on my own Lean Content Marketing hypothesis

Lean Content Marketing will make your content marketing more efficient, effective and increase the engagement between your audience and your content.

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But with a few simple, yet powerful tips, you can get back to your blogging best!

1) When are you most productive?

Identify the time of day you’re at your most productive and then stick to it. Countless studies have tried to identify this peak working time, but the truth is that everyone’s different.

2) Take a break

If writer’s block decides to rear its ugly head, don’t sit in front of the post you’re working on for hours at a time. If you just aren’t feeling inspired then take a break to make a brew or read a book for an hour. It’ll be much more helpful than the frustration that comes with not being able to start writing. You could even try typing out a rough first draft before taking a short break, then going back to it with a fresher perspective if you’re in a hurry.

3) Don’t work at night

Although many of us are at our most productive late at night, try to avoid working too late after dark and letting your content suffer as a result. Tiredness is one of the main causes of distraction and writer’s block. It’s also a major threat to your health.

4) Ditch the distractions

Get rid of unnecessary distractions like social media and your mobile phone unless they’re absolutely essential to your blogging. Although some people are able to fight the urge to give in to distractions like these, most people aren’t.

5) Look at other people’s ideas for blog fodder.

When your mind is a blank, websites like Topsy are a great way of dreaming up blog post ideas. Simply type your chosen search term into the box and you’ll be taken to search results that show what people across the web are saying about it. Whether you agree heartily with someone, disagree immensely with them or even have a concrete counter argument, this all provides great blog fodder.

6) Write about the things you know.

Only write about things you know. An industry authority might find your post and pick it to pieces. It’s also likely that a post about something you aren’t well informed about, will sound unprofessional and unconvincing.

7) Use organisational tools

Use tools like Remember the Milk, FreeMind and Windows Live Writer to help with organisation and productivity. Although handwritten to-do lists are sufficient, virtual productivity tools cut down on waste paper and clutter and can’t get lost or eaten by the dog.

Although blogging can prove difficult at times, working tips like these into your routine will prove invaluable where productivity is concerned. It means you can create the amount of content which your business needs.

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