Celebrate the Holidays with a few of SEJ’s finest articles of 2023.
Our Festive Flashback sequence runs from December 21 – January 5, that includes day by day reads on vital occasions, fundamentals, actionable methods, and thought chief opinions.
2023 has been fairly eventful within the search engine marketing trade and our contributors produced some excellent articles to maintain tempo and replicate these adjustments.
Catch up on one of the best reads of 2023 to offer you a lot to replicate on as you progress into 2024.
This article is an extract from the e-book “Content Marketing Strategy” by Robert Rose ©2023 and is reproduced and tailored with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.
This article is the primary in a sequence of three (Read: Designing The Content Marketing Strategy Measurement and Defining The Responsibilities In The Content Lifecycle) on Search Engine Journal that delve deeper into the ideas mentioned within the e-book, which formally launched on September 26, 2023.
As a token of appreciation to your readership, Kogan Page Ltd. has generously shared a 20% low cost code solely for Search Engine Journal readers. If you’re focused on buying the e-book, please use the promo code CMS20 at www.koganpage.com/content-marketing-strategy to redeem it.
Just as now we have the 4 Ps to explain the general advertising combine, we require a brand new mannequin to explain the technique of content material advertising.
The content material advertising technique begins with three core pillars: Communication, Experiences, and Operations (which bridges the opposite two).
These pillars overlap barely and thus body 5 particular classes of actions that managers within the enterprise will carry out.
Following are descriptions of the pillars and their related actions.
1. Coordinated Communication
As we established in the beginning of this e-book, enterprise content material is communication.
So, the enterprise should carry out sure actions to higher coordinate using content material with the intention to purchase, maintain, and develop clients and different audiences.
A profitable enterprise communicates clearly and with a constant voice. It can also be capable of talk in artistic and uniquely related ways in which replicate the variety of its individuals and audiences.
To obtain that delicate steadiness of consistency and variety, coordination is vital. This signifies that the primary core class of actions within the communication pillar is Purpose. This is content-as-a-capability.
Many companies fall right into a lure as a result of they consider that content material advertising can merely be created as a “talent place” inside the enterprise.
They rent a couple of journalists, editors, artistic copywriters, and material specialists, and set them off to be “good” at creating and managing useful content material.
But, as I stated within the earlier chapter, companies which are managing profitable content material advertising methods understand that the first goal of a succesful content material crew is to not be good at creating content material.
It is, somewhat, to allow the enterprise to be good on the operation of content material. Those journalists, artistic copywriters, or material specialists are often thrown right into a enterprise with solely the duty to “create nice stuff.”
There is often no scarcity of that demand, however they shortly change into swamped and don’t have the talent, energy, or infrastructure to say “no” when issues get to be an excessive amount of.
Quality begins to endure, after which doubts begin creeping in as as to if or not these are the best individuals, or whether or not profitable content material advertising is even attainable.
The Purpose exercise, then, is to develop and handle a transparent set of core duties and processes that construct and frequently assess the allocation of sources, talent units, and clear charters {that a} content material advertising crew will want with the intention to change into a differentiated enterprise functionality.
One of these expertise would be the precise creation of content material – however there are assuredly others as nicely (and we’ll discover them later on this e-book).
That results in the second exercise class within the Communication Pillar: The Model, or content-as-coordinated-communications. The Model exercise additionally overlaps into the Operations Pillar, which we’ll describe shortly.
Every enterprise that succeeds with content material advertising technique may have a well-defined and well-understood governance/working mannequin.
For instance, the enterprise we simply mentioned, with all these journalists, could find yourself with a complete division dedicated to content material advertising as a “centralized” crew.
The Cleveland Clinic is a good instance of this. The world-renowned hospital has created a centralized content material advertising division that could be a functioning enterprise unit.
They began with a handful of content material creators and advanced into a various and multi-functional, however centralized, crew with clear and customary working processes.
Other companies could deploy a “federated mannequin” through which the content material crew is answerable for creating solely a small share of content material. In truth, their complete practical mannequin could also be dedicated to enabling the opposite departments within the enterprise to create, handle, activate, and measure high quality content material throughout a number of channels.
Their function – very like a federal authorities – is admittedly to supply a centralized place the place “legal guidelines” (e.g., requirements, playbooks, workflows, and so on.) are created and saved so that everybody is working in the identical method. A fantastic instance of that is Anthem Blue Cross Insurance (now Elevance Health).
This firm employs 98,000 individuals and consists of a number of companies, together with pharmaceutical insurance coverage, dental insurance coverage, long-term care, and incapacity.
You’ll learn extra about their journey within the subsequent chapter, however one of many keys for the content material crew chief there was to create a proper constitution for her crew.
They created an organizational course of the place the totally different product teams have coordinated illustration, permitting every to interface with the content material crew.
The model content material crew is answerable for curating, creating, packaging, and making out there Elevance-level model tales.
2. A Portfolio Of Experiences
You’ve simply realized {that a} coordinated communication/content material method is managing the amount, and high quality, of what all the enterprise needs to say.
That leads us to the second pillar of a content material advertising technique – Experiences – all the best way on the different finish of the spectrum. Experiences are the designed containers of content material being created for audiences.
No matter how massive a enterprise is, it wants a strategic method to how the content material it creates might be utilized to energy designed platforms akin to emails, web sites, useful resource facilities, print magazines, PDF recordsdata, occasions, blogs, and even social media channels.
This is a vital side of working like a media firm that has owned media properties.
For instance, when a media firm thinks of its subsequent manufacturing, it could begin as a film – however then, virtually instantly, operational and administration processes kick in to discover how that very same content material might be leveraged in books, tv, podcasts, interactive leisure, and so on.
The story comes first, after which the considering for all of the totally different sorts of containers that may categorical that story in numerous methods.
Remember, for media corporations, the expertise that they monetize is the product. And they’ve two major methods of monetizing it.
They monetize entry to the expertise with fashions like subscriptions or promoting a restricted variety of tickets.
Or media corporations will monetize the expertise by promoting entry to the viewers consuming it by permitting sponsors to create content material that might be contained in it. This is the mannequin of promoting or sponsored content material.
Our owned media experiences for enterprise ought to be no totally different. All of a model’s owned media channels – the web site, weblog, useful resource heart, ecommerce catalog, print journal, and so on. – ought to be handled with the identical care and consideration as the prevailing product/service strains.
Just like a media firm, we must always suppose “content material first” after which how we’ll create all of the totally different sorts of containers to ship that content material.
We handle all of those as a portfolio of experiences that exploit useful content material for audiences. Each container ought to have strategic goal, objectives, and aims.
Arguing, for instance, that our web site or our weblog is much less necessary than any of our services is actually arguing that they shouldn’t exist in any respect.
So, as with every services or products, somebody must be answerable for making certain that these experiences are up to date and that they’ve charters, objectives, and particular methods which are optimized to fulfill the wants of the customers (audiences) they serve.
They ought to be designed and advanced to fulfill new market calls for, promoted in a typical method, and measured towards shared enterprise objectives. Further, like all of our services, they need to be simply discontinued after they not go well with our enterprise aims.
This pillar is based on the concept that there’s a crew targeted on the method of manufacturing and managing the platforms of an organization’s owned media technique in a method that’s optimum for the corporate’s enterprise objectives.
The two exercise classes inside this pillar are Audience and Value.
Audience is the place the enterprise should outline every expertise as a product. In different phrases, Audience is content-as-product. This harkens again to the earliest days of the 4 Ps.
Just like we might create a plan for each services or products we might convey to market, we now must create product plans for our owned media experiences.
This means crafting an answer that matches a market want, initiating market analysis into the viewers and understanding them nicely, and having particular, measurable objectives for every content-driven expertise being launched.
This e-book dives deep into the Audience exercise.
Treating experiences this fashion helps us ship their final objective, which is Value. Value is content-as-insight. Meeting all the designed aims of a portfolio of experiences delivers the worth of the content material advertising technique.
This exercise is the place we combine perception and map out precisely the place, when, and the way the content material advertising technique will present it. Designing a measurement and worth method is a core piece of this e-book.
And that will get us to the third content material advertising technique pillar, the glue that holds Coordinated Communications and Experiences collectively.
3. Strategic Operations
Consider for a second the observe of accounting.
It is among the oldest enterprise practices on this planet, relationship again to the 1400s when mathematician Luca Pacioli created the double-entry accounting system and launched the concept of ledgers, journals, and bookkeeping.
The causes for requirements and predictable pointers in accounting are straightforward to grasp.
Finance touches each a part of a enterprise. Everyone in enterprise does some type of accounting, from the best way timesheets are accomplished to procurement requisitions, vendor relationships, product gross sales, and even using uncooked supplies for services.
Now take into consideration content material and advertising. Today, it’s simply as pervasive as accounting – or much more so in some instances. Creating content material for enterprise communication touches each single a part of the enterprise. It’s the water through which we swim.
Yet, most companies deal with the creation, administration, distribution, and measurement of content material in an advert hoc method.
Remember, it’s not simply advertising that’s altering, it’s the complete enterprise technique. Thus, the CEO’s or enterprise proprietor’s relationship with advertising and content material adjustments as nicely.
In a 2022 article for McKinsey Consulting, one former retail CEO stated,
“Data has modified how the C-suite is interacting with advertising. Now it’s very exhausting to separate firm technique from advertising technique.”
If that’s true, then it’s additionally true that it’s exhausting to separate firm technique from our content material technique.
Today, advertising departments are checked out as factories – locations the place one thing profitable ought to be replicable one million occasions.
In order to attain consistency in replicating success and change into a core enterprise technique, content material advertising should have a clearly articulated and replicable course of that may flex and accommodate new concepts as they emerge.
The exercise on this pillar is the Frame, or content-as-standard.
If activation of participating content material is now the center of selling, content material operations are what make the center beat.
Getting content material advertising operations proper frees artistic individuals to do artistic issues that allow the enterprise technique, and empowers the advertising groups to attain this at scale.
As we’ve established, everybody within the enterprise creates content material: the net crew, the advertising automation/demand-gen crew, the content material advertising crew, companies, executives, frontline account representatives, salespeople, human sources, and even accounting, with invoices, contracts, and onboarding documentation.
In truth, it’s most likely simpler to depend all of the individuals who don’t create digital buyer communications lately. We’ve established that establishing communications coordination is a major pillar of a standardized method to content material.
Additionally, at the moment companies function in a multichannel world with, sometimes, dozens of channels (experiences) that should be populated with content material in a number of codecs.
For instance, take into account an organization that launches two to 4 new merchandise every quarter. For every new product launch, there are 10 belongings deliberate, together with brochures, product tech briefs, a thought management paper, and so on.
That could not sound like very a lot, however every of the ten belongings must be personalized for the 5 main service companions that may assist the advertising, and every of these service companions has promotional belongings that must be personalized for various content material varieties or channel specs (social media, video, and so on.).
Finally, all of these belongings must be translated into 4 languages. The internet result’s that 10 deliberate items of content material flip into roughly 300 digital belongings that must be designed and produced.
Multiply that by 2 new merchandise per quarter, and you find yourself with roughly 2,400 digital belongings created yearly only for new product launches.
So, it doesn’t matter how massive the enterprise is – a repeatable set of processes should be put in place which are ruled by requirements, pointers, playbooks, and know-how.
We name this the Frame actions as a result of, very very like the body of your home, it’s what holds the whole lot up. It is content-as-a-standard.
This third pillar, Operations, is the individuals, processes, and know-how that assist create a repeatable, constant course of to attach the coordinated content material creators (pillar 1) with the experiences powered by the content material they’re creating (pillar 2).
With the best content material operational mannequin in place, you may scale and measure enterprise content material.
Together these three pillars and the 5 building-block actions type a competency framework for the whole thing of your content material advertising technique. They are stress factors that assist to find out how robust or weak your technique is.
For instance, once I work with an organization that’s combating the aim of their company weblog, I’d first press on the Audience button. I can see how robust we’re at a company-wide understanding of how nicely we carry out that exercise.
I can look at what makes that class of exercise totally different or optimum.
That, then, helps me as a strategist perceive the place I might have to vary the exercise or strengthen any of the opposite pillars of coordinating communication, operational processes, or managing the experiences.
This framework places a conceptual construction to significant questions that should be answered:
What competencies and talent units are wanted for various roles of individuals, processes, and applied sciences within the enterprise in every of the pillars?
What working fashions might be required, valued, acknowledged, and rewarded with regard to a functioning content material technique?
How will we outline the inner processes of working like a media firm in order that this may be scaled and measured as an efficient enterprise perform?
How will the framework present for measurable aims, the outcomes of which is able to present perception into the worth being created each for the audiences and the enterprise?
How will we information the differentiating operational focus for content material advertising that may present the evolving aggressive benefit that the enterprise needs?
You could ponder whether there’s an overarching template, a cheat sheet, or standardized solutions to those questions. Fortunately, or maybe sadly for these of you who’re in search of a fast reply, there’s not.
Welcome to the artwork and science of content material advertising technique. It jogs my memory of the problem that James Culliton confronted in 1948 whereas introducing the advertising combine, and Jerome McCarthy had in 1960 introducing the 4 Ps.
While the framework could also be helpful, there isn’t a single reply for anyone firm a few template advertising combine or use of the 4 Ps. The substances to your good mixture of content material advertising technique might be yours, and really totally different, certainly.
There isn’t any template. There isn’t any good recipe.
One of an important issues we’ve realized after engaged on content material advertising technique for a whole bunch of manufacturers during the last decade is that what you set into these classes of actions is way much less necessary than consciously making the choice to place one thing in there.
Just as there isn’t a good advertising combine, there isn’t a good content material advertising technique. You will evolve. It will change. Because you and your small business will change.
As statistician George Box as soon as stated, “All fashions are flawed, however some are helpful.”
Successful content material advertising, both consciously or unconsciously, makes use of parts of this mannequin to bolster its operation. As I stated in the beginning: profitable, comfortable content material entrepreneurs appear to have an analogous method of working.
This is a mannequin that we’ve seen work – it’s been examined.
In truth, you might have realized sooner or later throughout this chapter that the remainder of this e-book is organized by overlaying every of the classes of actions in our content material advertising technique mannequin.
If you may formulate, construction, and pressure-test your actions in every field, then you might be nicely in your option to creating an incredible content material advertising technique.
Let’s get to it.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-three-pillars-of-content-marketing-strategy-festive-flashback/502120/
