content marketing that wins: making brands, readers and google happy

A conversation aboutA conversation about:

#Smwckcontent

Content Marketing That Wins: Making Brands, Readers AND Google Happy

September 23, 2013

• Steve Radick (@sradick)

• Vice President, Public Relations

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• Scott Smith (@ourmaninchicago)

• Vice President, Content Marketing

• Nick Papagiannis (@nikopapagiannis)

• Vice President, Search Director

@cramerkrasselt

#Smwckcontent

Content Marketing has so much potential

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How did it come to this?

4Examples from the Condescending Corporate Brand Page

We’re in a content marketing arms race

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“The more content I can put out,

the more luck I have,” he says.

He’s redeployed an employee at

VaynerMedia, his social media

consultancy, to “shadow my life”

by following him to record his

remarks and turn them into

social media content.”

- Gary Vaynerchuk in Forbes,

June 2013

#Smwckcontent

Rather than creating useful content for people, we’re creating mountains of garbage for machines

7Courtesy of Flickr user basmati – authentic help

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Email connected people

directly to other people

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And then marketers saw an

opportunity to make it more

efficient

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Websites connected people to

vast amounts of helpful

information

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And then marketers saw an

opportunity to make it more

efficient

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Social media was going to

change all that though

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And then marketers saw an

opportunity to make it more

efficient

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Branded content was going to

become the next evolution of

advertising

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And then marketers saw an

opportunity to make it more

efficient

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Stop trying to figure out the

tricks to gaming the system

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Because the system will

change tomorrow

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Courtesy of Flickr user woychukb

Courtesy of Flickr user chris fitz#Smwckcontent

The current way isn’t working anyway

18*Source: Forrester, March 2013 #Smwckcontent

We’ve now got the data and the tools to scale actual conversations and relationships

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Quality > Quantity

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Easier said than done

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“We need more leads coming in!”

“Are we on Flayvr yet? We totally need to be on Flayvr!!”

“Why is our blog traffic down? Make sure you post more so we get that back up!”

“I just saw that Brand X had 1,000 Likes on a Keep Calm and Carry On poster – I want us to do that too!”

“If you’re going to create new content, that all needs to go through Legal before it gets published and that takes 2-3 weeks”

“We need to have more likes than our competition”

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When it comes to content, the reader has to come first.

22#Smwckcontent

Great content will:

• Build trust with users through usefulness

• Drive measurable consumer action

• Satisfy a brand’s business needs

23#Smwckcontent

Great content will:

• Build trust with users through usefulness

• Drive measurable consumer action

• Satisfy a brand’s business needs

24#Smwckcontent

Great content will:

• Build trust with users through usefulness

• Drive measurable consumer action

• Satisfy a brand’s business needs

25#Smwckcontent

Trust: Sephora

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Trust: Sephora

An expert-driven, beauty-focused

community that connects with

individual consumers everywhere

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Usefulness: Amex Open

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Usefulness: Amex Open

A place for small businesses to

network

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Creating content for readers

Who is our audience? (Who isn’t?)

What do we want readers to do?

What do readers want from us? (Do we have it?)

What assets do we have – people, places, things?

How do they talk about us when they think we’re not listening? (Are we?)

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What do we have to offer that

no one else does?

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Do more than tell a story, tell yourstory

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Your brand produces content every day

• Your history

• Ideas that didn’t make the cut

• The “why” behind business decisions

• Challenges

• Your culture

• New product uses

• Requests for feedback

• Your causes

32#Smwckcontent

Panera’s Hard Road Campaign

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“Never sacrifice the quality of your copy for the sake of the search engines.”

- Matt Cutts, Head of Google's Webspam team

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Ultimately, good SEO is about providing a good user

experience and compelling content.

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1. Optimize Content Tech Environment

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2. Place the right keywords in right places

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3. Promote your content

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Content should be beneficial to your customer, reflective of

your brand, and optimized for Google

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Questions?

40Presentation will be available online at www.steveradick.com