3 Steps to Maximize Content Marketing Resources

How To Capitalize On Each Content Effort [Case Study]

Skip the one-off content marketing efforts. That’s fine for just-in-time social media engagement and staying top of mind but more is needed for your major content efforts.

Therefore, plan to capitalize on each content effort to maximize your content marketing resources because your budget and human resources are limited.

Case study: Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Email Marketing

For an example of how to maximize each content effort, examine what Marketo did with The Definitive Guide to Email Marketing. From that effort they created related content including a checklist with a great title, 17 Email Rules You Absolutely Have To Break, and a webinar, 4 Reasons to Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns. They reached out in different ways across owned and social media supporting the effort with a PPC campaign. To maximize those results, they used a tailored landing page.

Here is the Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing.

Here are two examples of related content created around the Definitive Guide.

Here are 2 samples of the emailings supporting this marketing effort that I received in my inbox. 

Additionally, Marketo supported this significant content marketing effort with paid search advertising and a related landing page. 

3 Steps to maximize content marketing resources

To ensure that you take full advantage of each content effort, follow these 3 steps.

1. Plan to repurpose content in advance.  

Make the most of your limited resources by mapping out your content creation in advance. This enables you to minimize resources by developing tailored pieces for various platforms and formats at the same time. (This is strongly related to the 80-20 Rule of Content Marketing.)

• Map out content reuse. Determine where and how you’ll use the content across platforms in advance.
• Adapt content to fit different platforms. Remember that one size doesn’t fit all for information distribution. You need to make it contextually relevant.

2. Distribute content across platforms  

Deliver your information to these 3 categories of platforms: owned, social and third party media. (Here’s a 37 point content distribution checklist.)

• Leverage owned media. Think in terms of publishing the full piece of content (which requires adaptation to the specific context) as well as promoting links to the information.
• Maximize social media reach. Distribute the content on your social media bases. Integrate social sharing buttons as well as ClickToTweet and Pin This options. Don’t underestimate the value of your employees sharing your content on their personal identities.
• Utilize third party sites. Craft tailored guest posts or articles and allow others to reprint your content without cost.

3. Support content with promotion (where appropriate)  

Tread lightly when promoting your content because content marketing should be void of marketing-speak. Position it as content distribution support.

• Implement an influencer outreach program. Get a little help from your social media friends. While you can ask influencers to share your content via direct messages and emails, it’s more powerful if you mention and/or link to them in your content. (Here’s how to influence the influencers in 9 steps.)
• Create a press release. While this tip sounds old school, press releases are still a great way to get your content out. Skip the “me, me, me” because bloggers and journalists consider that a yawn. Instead, incorporate multiple content formats and use a strong hook.
• Add paid promotion. Give your content a nudge with targeted, paid advertising on search and/or social media. This requires a budget and may involve a learning curve. Improve your results by using a tailored landing page.

Maximizing your content marketing resources requires planning ahead so that you can create multiple pieces of contextually relevant content out of each effort and distribute them where appropriate.

What other suggestions would you add to this list and why?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: (c)2013 – Heidi Cohen – All rights reserved. Limited rights to use if you link back to this post.