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Content Marketing A SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE WHITEPAPER JUNE 2013 ©2013 HEARST CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN: How content makes you discoverable and drives engagement When native ads work and when they don’t How to make social media (finally) prove ROI How to use analytics to increase staff efficiency

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Content Marketing

A S F G A T E | S F C H R O N I C L E W H I T E P A P E R

J U N E 2 0 1 3

© 2 0 1 3 H E A R S T C O R P O R A T I O N . A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D .

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• How content makes you discoverable and drives engagement • When native ads work and when they don’t• How to make social media (finally) prove ROI• How to use analytics to increase staff efficiency

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01 Introduction

02 Opportunity

03 Content Marketing

04 Content Publishing

05 Native Advertising

06 Social Media Publishing

07 KPIs

08 Insight

09 Appendix: Use Cases Resources

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Stories have always mattered, whether we are the listeners or the tellers. Stories connect us to our-selves, to our time, and to the people we care about.

We all share a built-in skepticism for anything that is non-story. Our hardwired wariness crosses cultural and generational segments. There’s that instant reflex that occurs when we read something that strikes us as either false or inauthentic. (Interestingly, “authenticity” comes from the same root word as “author.”)

The most effective marketing has always told a story, engaged us in a conversation, listened to us, and solved a problem.

So today, whether it’s native, sponsored or whatever, if it doesn’t do this, it doesn’t work.

We want to show you how storytelling is a business solution. We want to share with you some use cases, best practices, and performance metrics we think are interesting. And then we want to leave you with some ideas for building the systems and insights that will help you breakdown, refine and then scale your unique stories, the stories your customers want you to tell.

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Whoever tells

the best story

shapes the

culture.

ERWIN RAPHAEL MCMANUS

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The magpie effectHere’s what we’re seeing: An increasing realization that the key way to reach customers is via digital, a panic of how to do that, a flurry of marketing fragmentation, and a flood of new advertising play-ers, new marketing ideas, and new business models.

It’s the “magpie effect”: The compulsion to jump in and bet a fistful of chips on every shiny, new idea that appears. Sadly, these are tactics that only look like strategies, that leave you scratching your head about how much you spent developing that app or why your social media efforts don’t really seem to be accomplishing much of anything.

This fragmentation will be with us for a while, but you will be a lot more discerning about new market-ing ideas if you have a content strategy based on what your customers want. “My point of view on this is evolving,” IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg admits. “Large brand marketers want scale, but they also want intimacy. They need a content strategy. That will determine who thrives and who doesn’t....”

SEM/SEOFirst and foremost, companies need to be discoverable online. Traditionally this has been accom-plished by focusing on SEO (organic search results) and SEM (paid results.) And though they are still important, but they cannot get you all the way there. Why? Traditional “web” search behavior is di-minishing in the face of social and mobile behavior. (MARY MEEKER, KPMG) Today people get their news from Twitter and make buying decisions based on Pinterest.

And if you are spending on search engine marketing, it’s likely that the investment is not fully lever-aged. Take the major brand spending $25k-$30k per day on SEM. Because bid price and quality score are inextricably linked, the brand has no way to decrease daily spend and maintain the same page position. In fact, it’s likely with increasing competition, so the spend will continually increase.

Even with SEO, your strategy must involve a commitment to content, as content and social engage-ment now mean more than ever. As Forrester points out, “each new search engine release focuses increasingly on original, high quality content as the primary measure of user experience.”

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Social and MobileWith an emphasis on old KPIs (“Likes”), brands remain challenged to set meaningful standards for en-gagement, let alone point to social ROI. And mobile platforms don’t help. As Seth Godin points out, “A visit from a mobile user is almost certainly less likely to convert into a click, particularly a purchase. Your tweets are seen by ten times as many people, but only twice as likely to get clicked on as they used to be. There are a whole lot of people spending a lot of time browsing, not taking action. In fact, the easiest way for a post to not spread is for you to ask someone to actually do something.”

The ShiftBanner ads and “advertorial” are now routinely ignored. Facebook “Likes” don’t demonstrate engage-ment. Even Mark Cuban has a take on this: “Defining engagement by clicks, likes, unlikes and report-ing works for Google’s search engine, I don’t believe it works for a social network.” The occasional blog or efforts to increase your backlinks don’t make Google happy any more.

And paid search is increasingly more expensive and ineffective. Harvard Business Review cited a study by eBay Research Labs economists who analyzed eBay sales after shutting down purchases of search ads on Google and elsewhere, while maintaining a control set of regions where search ads continued unchanged. Their findings suggest that paid ads generate virtually no increase in sales, and even for ones that do, the benefits are far eclipsed by the cost of the ads.

But your customers are online — so how do you get them to pay attention?

To develop an effective strategy, clarity is important. How can brands fully understand the scope and quality of marketing campaigns when most of the ideas and terms are new, fragmented, and in-consistently applied? For example, IAB’s Rothenberg acknowledges the debate over native advertis-ing, “You can’t really define a buzzword like this. It’s going to be whatever anybody wants it to mean.”

Expect more flux. But don’t wait for new standards to become normalized. There is a way to can engage consumers now. After all, we know this — people don’t want to be sold to, they want to be inspired, educated, and guided on what matters to them each day. And that is what Content Market-ing does.

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View

Likes

Visit

Banners

Posts

Call to Action

Selling

Dwell

Shares

Engagement

Native

Edit Calendar

Education

Storytelling

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The story as business solutionAddressing the fragmentation without succumbing to magpie behavior means a stra-tegic commitment to content, a flexible set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and a working knowledge of best practices.

Content Marketing is the strategy. In its authority, it contains the essential elements of Content Publishing, Native Advertising, and Social Publishing.

Content Marketing is simply about telling the story your audience wants to hear. this is not new. American Express has been doing it with Travel and Leisure for 60 years. So what does this look like in digital?

Peter Minnium at IAB observes that “Content marketing is increasingly recognized as a new channel for brand marketers. At least two major agencies recently announced new units devoted to helping clients with content marketing development. American Express is well known for its “OPEN” Forum dispensing advice of all kinds to small businesses. Lincoln Motor Company’s “Lincoln Now site features content that celebrates design, technology and art, and in the process, the company’s 90-year history of making cars.”

The bottom line is that content works: 80% of business decision makers prefer company information in articles versus advertisements (GFK). Brands are figuring that out: 71% of brands say they’ll increase content spend in 2013 (FORRESTER).

But why content?

Historically, content has meant thought leadership: white papers and ebooks have tra-ditionally been used as brand differentiation, positioning companies as industry thought leaders, or more simply, as experts.

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ContentMarketing

ContentPublishing

SocialPublishing

NativeAdvertising

S T R A T E G Y

T A C T I C S

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In today’s landscape, this thought leadership tool has two profound effects.

1. In the fragmented marketplace, consumers are desperately seeking unbiased information to engage in a dialogue that will educate them. According to Brafton, 60 percent of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better purchase decisions. And the BlogHer Social Me-dia Matters study noted that 24% of the U.S. population said they make purchases based on blogs.

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of consumers lookto articles and blogsfor purchasingdecisions

of business decisionmakers say branded contenthelps make better purchase decisions

of consumers saycontent has “stronglyimpacted” their purchases

of consumers are more likelyto purchase from businessesthat offer custom content.

42%

60%

52%

61%

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2. Content makes brands more discoverable, by improving SEO (organic search results) and SEM (paid results.) “The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are full of oft-updated, use-ful information about a given service, product, topic or discipline,” MarketingVox explains.

For SEO, Google has moved away from backlinks as the primary factor in determining organic rank-ings. In recent releases, relevant content and social engagement carry the weight.

For SEM, your position is determined by your bid and quality score, so the latter is obviously critical. Quality score is determined by how relevant your keywords, ads and site are, which again, has much to do with consistent, quality content.

In summary, content marketing differentiates your brand, delivers higher conversion rates and im-proves your discoverability. Let’s look at three tactics that contribute to an effective content market-ing strategy.

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Then:All about the

backlinks

Position=Bid + quality

score

Now:Relevantcontent

Qualityscore =

Relevance

Now:Social

engagement

Relevance =Consistent

quality content

SEO

SEM

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Content Publishing

DefinitionToday, content publishers include traditional media companies, aggregators, agencies and the brands themselves. Brands are continually pushing out a variety of messaging to boards, shareholders, employees, partners, and customers. With this amount of content being produced, it’s time they reorganized like publishers — with assignments, content architecture, and schedules —an “editorial perspective.”

Every company is a media company.

An “editorial” (as opposed to a “marketing”) perspective allows brands to align with the consumer using narrative, the discipline of content publishing, and the deep cultural storytelling attributes of journalism.

An editorial perspective means:1. Thinking about what the audience wants to hear2. Telling a compelling story3. Consistently publishing stories to keep the reader engaged

Underlying all of this is the need for high quality content. Even marketing copy that is persuasive can have its limitations. To cut throught the skepticism of brand marketing, Qualcomm has focused on content publishing. Publisher Liya Sharif: “The key to successful content marketing lies in a sound editorial vision behind cutting-edge brand journalism and a blended content strategy.”

Major brands like GE have bypassed agencies and become publishers working directly with content developers and aggregators. GE has hired senior business executives with digital media chops to run their content publishing shops in the style of traditional newsrooms.

REI was an early leader in the field of content marketing, and used it to define their brand. Their site features a rich media LEARNING section. How-to and aspirational video content is published in series form, and distributed on a regular schedule through their now formidable social channels.

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Native promoted Tweets have a 3% CTR – 6x the standard banner click-through. (GARTNER)

In videos, native ads generated 82% “brand lift, as opposed to 2% for traditional prerolls.

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Native Advertising

DefinitionOnce a brand has developed a content publishing program, the next step is to drive traffic. A particularly effective method (and topic du jour) is native advertising.

There are as many definitions for native advertising as people trying to sell it. What apps were to 2011, native is to 2013. But once you boil down the hysteria, native advertising has two unique components:

1. It is branded editorial content integrated “instream” or directly in a site’s user experience. That means it can look similar to editorial, or that it appears in non-traditional positions. 2. The content is editorial, not advertorial. The topics are not about the advertiser; they are of high value to the customer.

Native can also be defined by what it enables. Outbrain’s Tom Foran notes that “Native is less about sexy placements and more about a chance to move away from the old-school model of extracting value from readers in favor of starting a conversation with them through great content.”

And it works: a recent IPG Media Lab study of 4700 consumers showed that:

• More people looked at the native ads (26%) than original editorial content (24%)

• Consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than banner ads

• 71% that had previously bought a product said they identified with the brand (50% for banners)

• 32% said the native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend” versus 19% for banner ads

Among IPG Media’s takeaways was that “marketers actively creating original brand content should look to promote their content through native ads, as people view them similarly to editorial content.”

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Ecosystem: Who’s getting it right

The Atlantic’s Quartz business site was built for mobile first and eschewed traditional banners in favor of native sponsored content: a hit with their founding sponsors Boeing, Chevron, Credit Suisse and Cadillac. The content was highly relevant for business readers; sponsors were not mentioned in articles. Since launching, the site has added 11 more blue chip sponsors. Quartz is growing, reporting 2.3 million monthly uniques last month.

Buzzfeed is often cited as the inventor of native advertising. Sponsored content flows invisibly among within the site content and draws massive traffic, as well as substantial ad dollars. Think it’s a one hit wonder? Recently, The NY Times invited Buzzfeed in to explore offering similar sponsored stories on their site.

Who’s getting it wrong

The Atlantic pushed the boundaries of native advertising by publishing a feel-good “sponsored story” about Scientology, that included only positive reader comments. The problem? It’s not native. It’s about Scientology. It’s old-fashioned advertorial.

Meanwhile, sister site Quartz, seems to be backing off of the native promise, allowing “native” pieces to describe sponsor brand benefits and initiatives directly.

Buzzfeed: Its’ hard to argue with this kind of success, and in many cases it works well. But one won-ders how the traffic driven to “40 Reasons Honey Boo Boo Became a National Treasure in 2012” or “12 Days of Grumpy Cat Christmas” will really benefit Capital One or JetBlue. It’s easier to see how more related content, such as “18 Things We Did In College That We’ll Never Do Again” can produce ROI for Salt Student Loans.

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Social Publishing

DefinitionA tactical “editorial calendar” approach to content channeled through social media, including Face-book, Google+, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Like a traditional editorial calendar, care is taken that each channel’s content is crafted to its unique audience and is then architected in a compelling storyline. For instance, if a consumer is following a brand’s Twitter feed over the course of a year, they will receive an engaging narrative—a story—rather than a series of random dashed-off tweets.

As discussed earlier, much online navigation has moved from traditional search to social media chan-nels. These channels have become the wayfinding for our news, information, and buying decisions.

EcosystemMarketers have long assumed content shared by friends or other influencers carries more weight than paid placements. Now GE has some proof. The brand lift was calcu-lated based on short online survey responses to the question: “What comes to mind when you think of General Electric (GE)?”

Working with social-media site Buzzfeed, GE tested a campaign last fall in which the marketer distributed “The GE Show” video through Buzzfeed both in paid display place-ments and sharing. The “brand lift,” which measured the extent to which consumers said they saw GE as “creative,” was 138% higher for consumers exposed to via sharing

through Buzzfeed.The value of earned media suggested by the study, of course, gives digital platforms that can dem-onstrate higher rates of sharing more value than those with lower rates. And sharing comes out of conversations, not sales pitches.

We also know that “Shares” also mean more than “Likes” in viral behavior, in buying decisions, and even in SEO, where Google gives more weight to true engagement (commenting and sharing). (GOOGLE)

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Key Performance Indicators

Native advertising, along with content and social publishing is best positioned as a tactic that support a brand’s content marketing strategy. Content marketing is about the stories that consumers want to hear, delivered through effective advertising and social channels that allow marketers to measure relevance, engagement, and brand loyalty.

Once you have a content marketing strategy and supporting tactics in place it’s time to create a management and measurement layer. The “indicators” for a KPI will vary by the goals of the brand. Your content marketing KPIs serve as a mapping tool to take you from where you are and to where you should go, so that everyone is using the same map, or similarly, one version of the truth.

Sample KPIs

• Engagement Sharing in social media is more valuable than reads or “Likes.” Focusing on KPIs around commenting and sharing will allow you to efficiently refine campaign effectiveness, and improve SEO.

• Click-Through Rate The standard from the Web era. In a content marketing context, strong story-telling and native advertising can create a 6x click-through rate. (GARTNER)

• Sentiment Measuring what people are saying in social channels

• Quality Score Begin with a baseline of your SEM Quality Score, and measure improvement from content publishing campaigns.

• Brand Lift For brand-oriented campaigns, measure the percentage increase in consumer perception against key purchase metrics, such as awareness, favorability, or purchase intent.

• Landing Page Conversion The bottom line for content, native and social. Take a baseline and watch conversion improvement with engaged buyers.

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Dwell TIME SPENT ON CONTENT

Click-Through Rate EFFECTIVENESS OF CALL TO ACTION

Search Quality Score CHANGE IN SEM RANKINGS

SEOCHANGE IN ORGANIC RANKINGS

Content Quality ScoreREADER RESPONSE/BRAND INVESTMENT

Brand Lift TRACK PERCEPTION THROUGH PURCHASE FUNNEL

Landing Page ConversionTRACK % INCREASE WITH EDUCATED BUYERS

Click-Through RateA/B TEST AGAINST TRADITIONAL DISPLAY

Length of view/view through (video)A/B TEST AGAINST TRADITIONAL DISPLAY

Dwell TIME SPENT ON CONTENT

Brand Lift TRACK PERCEPTION THROUGH PURCHASE FUNNEL

Landing Page ConversionTRACK % INCREASE WITH EDUCATED BUYERS

Engagement# OF COMMENTS/POSTS

Amplification# OF SHARES/POSTS

Response Rate % OF USER POSTS THE ADMIN RESPONDS TO

Key InfluencersIDENTIFYING MOST FREQUENT INTERACTIONS

Sentiment WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

Quality Score% ENGAGEMENT PER POST/BRAND INVESTMENT

Landing Page ConversionTRACK % INCREASE WITH EDUCATED BUYERS

Sample KPIs

Content Publishing Native Advertising Social Media

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Insight

In a recent Wall Street Journal article “Software is Eating the World,” Marc Andreesen points out that “More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be delivered at global scale.”

And he doesn’t just mean Netflix and Amazon. He points to Pixar, Google, LinkedIn, Zynga, Spotify, Skype — even Fed Ex that he describes as “a software network that happens to have trucks, planes and distribution hubs attached.”

All good news, because software means automation. Which means efficiency, which means savings. But what it really means is that you now can capture data. And the more data there is, the more important it is to listen, analyze, and gain insight.

The McKinsey Global Institute in a 2011 report Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity frames the case for data insight, transforming the business beyond the visibility, transparency, and accuracy of information toward the creation of rich content and product refinement:

“Data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services. It can be used to improve the development of the next genera-tion of products and services. Manufacturers are using data obtained from sensors embed-ded in products to create innovative after-sales service offerings such as proactive mainte-nance, preventive measures that take place before a failure occurs or is even noticed.”

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Listening to

Analytics

Real-timeInsight

Process/Product

Improvement

KPIs

N E W V A L U E

C H A I N

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Forget Porter’s old value chain. Business is no longer about managing transactions. If you have the right data, and the discipline to listen and analyze, then you gain real time insight.

We know content marketing will produce rich customer conversations and a substan-tial improvement in KPIs. But measurement is only the beginning. From these analytics, we gain insight and the ability to continually refine our conversations—and products—to be more satisfying to the customer.

The experience gets better, based on what people want. And when the improved experience gets another round of customer response and further refinement, it just gets better and better.

J O H N M I L L E R J O N O B E R M E Y E RE X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R , S F G A T E | S F C H R O N I C L E A G E N C Y C O N T E N T S T R A T E G I S T

W I T H S P E C I A L T H A N K S T O J E F F B E R G I N , S V P S A L E S , S F C H R O N I C L E

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Long before

I wrote stories,

I listened for

stories.”

EUDORA WELTY

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About the Authors

J O H N M I L L E R is Executive Director of SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE, a full-service marketing agency, offering digital branding, communications and marketing expertise, all with the storytell-ing heritage of The San Francisco Chronicle.

His background is in media, as an editor/art director at Esquire, Vanity Fair, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal. Miller has leveraged his editorial background to develop unique content strategies for Target, Oracle, Salesforce, Geico, Charles Schwab, and the National Park Service.

He has also worked as a CMO for Astadia, a global cloud integrator, as a consultant building data interfaces for SAP and GoodData, and as Brand Director for Bonnier Corp., where he developed an in-house agency delivering integrated marketing programs across 100 titles.

[email protected]

J O N O B E R M E Y E R supports global brands, agencies and publishers as they build relevance and revenue capacity. Operationally- minded, he considers himself a translator and simplifier of highly-complex business topics, segmenting content into strategic verticals and across investor,executive, line of business and general public audiences.

Jon is an architect, editor and author of thought leadership papers, books and eBooks. He is fluent in venture business models and enterprise growth strategies. He is especially versatile in disruptive technologies such as digital media, cloud computing, regenerative medicine and nano-technology.

He has worked with John Miller on projects for SAP, Informatica, Salesforce, Astadia, GoodData, and the SFGATE | SF CHRONICLEAgency.

[email protected]

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Best Practices

Citibank Citibank’s Citi Bike, a map used for finding bikes in New York City, lives on the NY Times Scoop list-ings page. Instead of being an editorial product — like the rest of The Scoop’s listings of restaurants, coffee shops, etc. — the bike-finding map carries a “Sponsored” label. If most native advertising tries to make sponsor-provided content look a bit like a news article, this tries to make it look a bit like a regular tab in a mobile app. What’s interesting is that the “content” here is less a collection of words and pictures than a real-time data service. And it’s a match that can go both ways: The Times says that Citi Bike’s own iOS and Android apps will be updated this summer to feature the Scoop’s listings.

Cole HaanThe objective was to move market share and revenue toward younger demographic of female shoe buyers and shift perception from Cole Haan as matronly shoes of comfort to stylish options for young professionals. The solution proposed by agency Refinery29—whose brand and cultivated audience al-lowed them to act as a publisher—was a unique branded site devoted to nightlife: #don’tgohome. The site profiled New York neighborhoods and featured night spots, combined with outfits for each place.

QualcommThe semiconductor and mobile technology giant found consumers were skeptical of brand advertising and deafend by social media chatter. They developed an in-house publishing division, hiring seasoned journalists and editors. The company’s articles focus on 1) reader engagement, 2) articles with edito-rial benefit that don’t “sell”, 3) high journalism standards, 4) analytics driving future content.

ZapposZN, Zappos’ digital magazine, is dedicated to sharing the latest fashion trends. Over the past few years, Zappos has been moving toward selling more than shoes (as this magazine shows). An experi-enced staff with backgrounds in journalism weaves compelling stories with the ability to make con-textual purchases directly from the iPad.

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SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE Agency Best Practices

Big 5 Sporting GoodsTo distinguish Big 5 as a “beginners’ sports” store, we developed a content-rich Family Sports site. We drove traffic through a parallel special section on SF Gate (for SEO), as well as retargeted native video advertising. Finally, we layered on an aggressive social media publishing campaign, pushing custom content through Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

SalesforceSalesforce relies on significant revenue from partners implementing their platform. Yet it was hard to get their sales teams to go beyond selling product and consider these secondary services. The prin-cipals of SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE created a content publishing program: a series of short, MTV- style videos, focusing on partner capabilities and the opportunity for sales teams to benefit from these relationships. Revenue through the partner channels doubled in two years.

American Express American Express wanted to develop closer connections with avid travelers. The principals of SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE worked with Islands, Saveur, and Caribbean Travel and Life magazines to package an integrated VIP program. When you picked up a copy of Islands, you saw a sticker on the cover an-nouncing AMEX VIP deals inside. When you opened to a story on a resort, the same sticker would an-nounce the ability to receive 1⁄2 off suites at the property, if you used your AMEX card. Same with the web, tablet, and mobile editions of each publication. With this targeted, contextual approach, AMEX isn’t selling, they’re empowering the customer.

Aesthetic Surgeons AssociationPlastic surgeons rely on branding to differentiate themselves from competitors. From a two-hour interview, The principals of SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE developed a personalized book for doctors, which acted as a powerful sales tool, establishing them as thought leaders and differentiating them from competition. We then created a 12-month social media program, extracting book excerpts into a thoughtful and cadenced narrative through blogs, tweets, posts, and press releases. SEO soared and

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Resources

Native Advertising LeaderboardSharethrough and SimpleReach have joined to create an educational and idea-sharing event called the Native Advertising Summit. The two companies have also collaborated on the Native Ad Leaderboard, designed as a central destination to let anyone keep up on the pulse of the sponsored content indus-try. It tracks sponsored content produced by brands and publishers and ranks each based on social activity across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social channels. nativeadvertising.com/#/leader-board

IPG Media Labipglab.com

Nieman Journalism Lab(Nieman Foundation, Harvard)niemanlab.org

Newsonomics(Ken Doctor)newsonomics.com

The Content Strategist(Contently)contently.com/blog

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Resources

A Content Marketing Map

Below is a diagram of how the SFGATE | SF CHRONICLE Agency develops a content marketing strategy. The tactics:

• Content Publishing: developed by industry experts and co-published on brand sites and SF Gate, to significantly drive SEO.

• Native Advertising: Target distribution through SF Gate and its national network.

• Social Media Publishing: An editorial calendar (including promoted and sponsored posts) published through appropriate social channels.

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