market your marketing: driving discovery of your content

Marketing Your Marketing: How to Drive Discovery of Your Content

Sarah Skerik VP Content Marketing

PR Newswire

Marketing Your Marketing: How to Drive Discovery of Your Content

Sarah Skerik VP Content Marketing

PR Newswire

Hello.

For the Twitterers among us: I’m @sarahskerik of @prnewswire, and our hosts today are @verticalmeasure.

(Their CEO @ArnieK shares a lot of great stuff too!)

Overview

• Evolution of media• Subsequent changes

in buyer behavior • Conversational

search & the social media connection

• Tactics for driving content discovery

@sarahskerik @prnewswire

For news & info traditional media have lost to digital.


We’re looking for really granular stuff


And we’re OK with branded content.

Excerpt from Sharethrough infographic


And audience behavior has changed…

B2B customers contact a B2B customers contact a sales rep only after sales rep only after 70% of 70% of the purchase decision the purchase decision has has been made. – been made. – Sirius Decisions Sirius Decisions 2012 2012


The new marketing reality:We’re competing for finite

audience attention against an infinite ocean of content.


Social popularity drives content visibility in search engines.


TACTICS FOR DRIVING DISCOVERY

Ripped from the headlines! (… and the Twitter feeds)


Popular stories = audience preferences

From EETimes.com


Using the attention current events generate


Pro tip: These are trackable URLsPro tip: These are trackable URLs


Tie thought leadership to timely events


Promoting blog posts drove increases in visitors, visits and views.


Use editorial calendars to guide your content calendar in terms of both TOPICS and TIMING

Leverage sponsored/owned content

The most interesting aspect of your research/study/white paper is your news hook.


Market your marketing: distribute the content you publish.


Content distribution seeds visibility within new audiences


Find the people who care, and get connected.


Interested influencers will amplify & extend your story.

Use free PR sites – judiciously.

• Focus on different message elements – no duplicate content!

• It’s about the content not links

• Use trackable links

CAVEAT• Beware an emphasis on

SEO• Look for no follow link

attributes

Balance time & effort against results.

Did you get any Clicks? Shares? Results? Anything?

Mind the long tail!

Granular search means more qualified interest will build over time.

And if you do a good job of surfacing content in relevant ways, the tails will grow longer and longer.

Formatting tips that my-hand-to-my-hand-to-GodGod will improve your message visibility.

• Keep them short. Why? – Our data. (80-130)– Search engines (65) – Remember that AP

slide? (80)– Twitter (100)

• Use a subhead to keep peers happy.

Headline length REALLY matters.


Shoot for about 100 characters in your headline, and lead with the most important ideas (or keyword.)

Employ multimedia elements.

• Visuals have their own distribution networks

• Visuals draw eyeballs• Algorithms value

visuals• People like pictures. • Better results accrue


Dump the speed bump. Give the reader a reason to keep reading.

September 11, 2013/Cleveland/ -- XYZ Corporation, a leading global provider of world-class, end-to-end cross-platform scalable enterprise cloud solutions designed to deliver comprehensive process-improvement outcomes for customers in various vertical sectors including manufacturing, mining and procurement today announced …


Format content deliberately to maintain (and re-capture) attention


Embed a CTA near the top of the page.

Link strategically. Think reader service, not SEO. •Link to profiles of key people quoted in the message. •Embed calls to action for prospects


Keywords aren’t just search friendly, they’re relatable.

200%200%!!


Final thoughts

From your calendar to your content, build an element of distribution into every information component you publish.

Driving ongoing discovery of your content is crucial.


Thank you! Sarah Skerik

Vice president of content marketing, PR Newswire• @sarahskerik • Linkedin.com/in/sarahskerik

Discovery is a recurring theme on the PR Newswire

blog. Stay up to speed with my latest experiments:

http://blog.prnewswire.com/tag/discovery/

http://promotions.prnewswire.com/discover.html

QUESTIONS?

Contact: 888-476-1881www.VerticalMeasures.com

How Changes in SEO Will Affect your Website in 2014 and BeyondPresenter: Mike Huber, VP of Client Solutions, Vertical Measures

Learn about:•Recap of Google 2013 updates and their impact and significance.•Steps to take to mitigate negative impact of these updates.•How you maintain and/or increase your website traffic for 2014•Specific action steps you can take to grow traffic.•How SEO will change for 2014 and beyond.

Check out our website at www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars for registration information.

12DEC

11am PST2pm EST