Episode #117 - Content Marketing for Agencies with Simon Thompson - a podcast by WordPress business specialist Troy Dean featuring Seth Godin, Michael Gerber, Guy Kawasaki, Joe Pulizzi, Andrew Warner, James Schramko, Brian Clark, Ed Dale, Dan Norris and many more.
from 2017-03-16T02:09
Watch the video of this podcast here.
Simon’s career began in the world of print marketing and media. His role was to sell ad space in architecture and construction magazines, to architecture and construction companies.
About a year later he took a job with Ignite Media Brands, a solutions agency for channels with digital and broadcast. They worked with companies like MTV, Nickelodeon, and National Geographic. It was a good place to cut his teeth, and learn the ins and outs of working with major brands.
From there he joined MR9, a leader in the digital media scene. MR9 was a joint venture between Microsoft and a broadcast network called Channel 9. While working with them Simon produced content for clients like L'Oreal and BMW.
However not long ago the entrepreneurial bug bit him and he struck out on his own with Content Kite. Content Kite works predominantly with digital agencies by creating content for them and helping them acquire leads and sales through content.
With his extensive background in content creation and marketing for big brands, I wasted no time in digging in on today’s show! My first question was where to start with content creation. Simon recommended putting a strategy in place as your initial step when crafting and curating content for your audience.
While this sounds like the usual sort of advice, he went a step further and offered a specific method called the 'Hub and Spoke Method'. This is what Content Kite uses with their clientele and it works like this: come up with a central idea or topic that would appeal to your target audience and schedule 12 topics around that central idea.
Here’s an example: Content Kite works exclusively with digital agencies so their central idea (or hub) is how to get more leads for your digital agency. From there, Content Kite creates a bunch of topics around that (the spokes).
Using this method also provides a simple way to decide if they should create content about a particular topic. All they have to do is ask the simple question: will this help our digital agencies get more leads? If it will then they post about it, and if not then they do not create content for that idea.
Once you know what content to create and you are creating it, the next big step is promoting it and sharing it. To that end, Simon offered three specific strategies you can use to leverage content beyond your website.
1. Run a content upgrade with every piece of content.
A content upgrade is another form of a lead magnet, except in this instance, the upgrade is very specific to the blog post that person is reading at the time.
This strategy is important because the only thing you know for sure when someone visits your blog post is that they are interested in that piece of content. So if you can create additional content that is specifically tailored to the piece of content they are already reading and showing an interest in then it’s much more likely they will sign up for your list in exchange for additional content on that same subject.
2. Content promotion.
At Content Kite they learned a trick to doing this, accidentally.
When you write content, make sure you reach out to blogs and other publications that you are going to link to and ask if they have anything extra to offer. Ask them if they have a quote or insight they’d like to contribute.
People are happy to give this because they are seen as the authority on the topic and all they have to do is hit reply and give a little bit of information.
When you publish the piece be sure to let that person know it's live. The chances of them sharing the article will be significantly higher! It makes your contributor look good and helps you in the process.
3. Share multiple times on social media.
Simon shares a Kissmetrics study on this which showed double the readership when a piece was shared multiple times on social media platforms!
While a lot of people resist doing this, the study shows the importance of this step. You can use tools like Buffer or something similar to share your content multiple times across multiple platforms. Each additional time you share it, be sure you do little things like change the headline, and listen to what your audience says in response.
He estimates 5-10% of your users will see a post by you so it's okay to put it out there multiple times.
Be sure to hear the other examples and tips up Simon’s sleeve on today’s show. He talks about data they’ve collected at Content Kite, on how many digital agencies are actually producing content consistently and why there’s a major opportunity there. He goes into greater detail on that and so much more on this edition of WP Elevation!
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