LEAN MEAN CONTENTMARKETING MACHINE

ABOUT TY

Tyrona Heath is the Founder of Spectacled Marketer @specmarkteam. Clients benefit from Ty’s

seven years of experience at Google Inc. where she managed Google AdWords advertiser

campaigns and delivered marketing product education to thousands of Google employees,

partner agencies and resellers.

Ty has an MBA in Marketing and Management from Emory University’s Goizueta Business

School and an Economics degree from Georgetown University. Ty has been running the

Spectacled Marketer agency for 3 years, successfully delivering inbound marketing campaigns

in collaboration with clients.

Ty is into sci-fi books, technology, track & field and is a brunch fan. She loves her pitbull Bailey.

By Tyrona Heath

WHO WE ARE

Spectacled Marketer is a content marketing consulting firm that specializes in educating organizations on how to

generate leads, sales and grow the credibility of their business online.

The central focus of Spectacled Marketer is delivering educational content that helps organizations learn how to attract

qualified prospects and increase closed

customers.

We generate leads by turning our clients’ websites into automatic lead nurturing machines. Clients benefit from our data

driven approach to map, guide and enable the customer journey from prospect to purchase.

TABLE OF CONTENTS1. Lean Content Marketing

2. What is Lean Content Marketing?

3. Defining Your Content Engine

4. The Content Pillar Approach

5. Quality Over Quantity

6. Don’t Go It Alone

7. Create Your Editorial Schedule

8. 3 Tools for Editorial Management

9. Interviewing Subject Matter Experts

for Content

10. Time to Build Your Content

11. Achieving Stellar Design

12. Conclusion

LEAN MEAN CONTENTMARKETING MACHINE Great content earns the attention of customers,

makes the company easy to be found, and draws

customers to the website by producing interesting

content. Sharing is caring and inbound is about

creating and sharing content with the world. By

creating content specifically designed to appeal to

your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified

prospects to your business and keeps them coming

back for more.

Today, brands must act as publishers. Content marketing is the new branding and there’s really no escaping it. Every

business, large and small, is turning into a magazine of sorts, if you will, producing content. I think it’s really good to

produce as much of your content in-house as possible, but obviously, we have constraints. Lean Content Marketing is an

iterative approach to producing high quality content more efficiently. Of course, great content lands stronger leads and

more customers!

Blogging is at the center of content strategy. It’s what keeps the search engines coming back; it’s what keeps your site

fresh. I’ve had some people in the past push back and fight me on the benefits of starting a blog but I won’t budge. I

really believe that just about every business should have a blog.

Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines eat content for breakfast. Fresh content is what keeps them coming back; this is

what improves your ranking from a search engine optimization standpoint. If you care about those things and you care

WHAT IS LEAN CONTENT MARKETING?

about escaping the paid advertising treadmill, then you have to think about content creation and blogging as a key

element of that. Statistics definitely show that consistent blogging boosts your inbound marketing ROI. The more you

can blog, the better. Some of you might be thinking: “Oh, my Gosh. Blog every day? I don’t know if I can do that.” And

that’s a legitimate concern, and we’ll talk a little bit more about this later in the ebook to help you overcome this anxiety

with a lean approach.

DEFINING YOU CONTENT ENGINEWhat we’re going to do is define your content engine. Just like any other successful process in business that has a

system, a system is what you need to be successful. It’s not ad hoc; it’s planned out, everyone on your team understands

what needs to happen step by step and you’re able to crank out content like a machine. This is the point that we need to

get you to when it comes to your content marketing.

THE CONTENT PILLAR APPROACHThe content pillar approach to content creation is growing in significance and is practiced by more and more businesses.

The approach is lean and lean is how you go the distance. Building a content pillar essentially means starting from the

top down in your development approach. You start at the campaign level by setting goals, timeframe and building a con-

tent pillar such as an ebook a presentation or research report for example. Once you choose your “pillar” piece, you then

chunk down that content pillar out into multiple pieces of content that you can reimagine and use in different ways.

Let me give you a high level hypothetical example:

1. Set Your Campaign Objectives - The goal is to map out what you want to run in terms of campaigns for the next

quarter with key performance indicators and length of time.

2. Choose a Content Piece - Next, you review the questions your customers are asking and decide on the type of

content that is the best fit to guide and respond to your audience. Based on those questions, you define the content

of an eBook. It helps to group customer questions into connected topics.

3. Chunk Your Content - From the pillar eBook, you can then extract multiple blog posts. Perhaps three or four blog

posts go into one eBook.

4. Keep Chunking Your Content - Then, you take those blog posts and you pull out key pieces. For example, quotes

from the blog post can become social posts. Alternately, pull out the key step-by-step elements of the blog post and

make a checklist.

5. Keep Reimagining Your Content Formats - Going back to your pillar piece, you can convert the eBook into a

Slideshare presentation or a webinar. The point I’m making here, is that as you start to think

about content, think about it as something that can be transformed into multiple pieces of

work and delivered through multiple mediums depending on your marketing goals.

Never again will you think of an eBook as just an eBook; it has many lives, like a cat has nine lives,

maybe ten.

DEFINING YOU CONTENT ENGINEBeing a content machine is not necessarily about churning out as much content as you can, as fast

as you can, because if you do that, quality can suffer. It’s really important to focus on quality over

quantity. I would rather you come out with one really strong piece of content once a quarter than

to see you trying to come out with multiple pieces of content and the quality is poor.

The beauty of the content pillar approach is even if you only do one strong piece of content, that

one strong piece of content has so many lives that your editorial calendar can still be very robust.

As you build out your content capabilities, your capacity to create more high quality content will

improve. In the beginning it is better to create fewer more focused pieces. For example, one very

strong eBook that can be chunked into multiple pieces of content that can then fill your calendar for the quarter. So sit

down with your team, think about your customers’ questions, and start to plan what does a calendar with campaigns

look like and who are the people responsible for developing that content.

DON’T GO IT ALONEThe other thing to think about as you begin is don’t do it by yourself. Your editorial calendar, as you start, will be

relatively empty because you will first need to do an audit of your own content to understand what you already have.

From there, you’ll need to recycle your old content and create it.

In the meantime, as you build your own content library, don’t be afraid to find other blogs or other businesses you

admire that are talking about some of the same topics. Network with them by sharing their content through your social

channels and plan ahead to do this on your editorial calendar. Also, look for complementary content partners who you

can work with, thereby relieving some of your load. If there’s a partner or even a client that you can reach out to and

create content with you can develop co-branded pieces. This is another way to relieve the content load while taking

some of the weight off of your shoulders and adding value to your editorial schedule.

CREATE YOUR EDITORIAL SCHEDULESpeaking of editorial schedules, this is also an important tool to use. An editorial calendar is a tool that helps you plan

ahead. My team sits down each quarter and we map out our editorial schedule for the following quarter. We plan for the

next three months what campaigns we will run and the content associated with each campaign. For instance, ebooks

make up the blog posts and the social posts that come out of those. Using our editorial plan we know when something is

coming out, who’s responsible for it, what are the moving parts, and when it’s due. It’s a project plan dedicated to your

content marketing.

There are multiple tools you can use to build an editorial calendar:

1. Asana - I definitely recommend checking out Asana. Essentially, it’s a cloud based project

management tool where you can assign owners and create calendars with due dates around a

plan. You can attach Google documents and files. It’s just a fabulous tool.

3 TOOLS FOREDITORIAL MANAGEMENT

2. Google Docs - You can use good ol Google docs or spreadsheets,

of course.

3. Basecamp - A lot of people are familiar with Basecamp. Basecamp is a

popular project management tool.

The best way to compelling content is to answer your prospect’s questions. In order to do this, you need to work with

the appropriate people in the business to answer those questions. As you start sketching out your content schedule

interview time with your subject matter experts. Before you meet with them, set their expectations on time and send

them the questions in advance so they’re prepared to answer your questions. The person doing the interviewing doesn’t

necessarily have to be you; you might delegate this to someone on your team, but make sure that they are able to ask

follow-up questions and dig a little bit deeper. This is why we’re seeing a trend in inbound marketing with hiring of more

journalists and people who are familiar with communications, because they are trained on how to know what questions

to ask. They know how to dig deeper. They know how to pull out the story. I highly recommend you find an interviewer

that is adept with those particular skills to be the one to capture this content and ask the right questions.

INTERVIEWING SUBJECTMATTER EXPERTS FOR CONTENT

So how do you capture this content?

A lot of different ways:

1. iPhone - You can record someone with your

iPhone. Just press record and start talking. I’ve

definitely done this before for quick interviews.

2. DSLR Camera - I also purchased a relatively

cheap, affordable DSLR camera that I can use to

shoot on the fly.

3. Google Hangouts - Also, Google Hangouts can

be recorded. In particular, you can connect to

your Google Hangout to your YouTube channel

with a Google Hangout on air, and once you

finish the hangout, the content will already be

on YouTube waiting for you.

4. Skype and eCamm Recorder - There’s also

Skype. So in particular for international interviews, this works

really well. There’s a plug-in called eCamm recorder that you can plug into Skype so that you can call the person on Skype and

then press record with eCamm, and then you will automatically have the content ready to go and waiting for you. Once you

capture the content, you want to get it transcribed.

5. Speechpad - I’ve gotten really high quality transcribed content from speechpad.com. I they have as fast as a 24 hour

turnaround time if you really need it fast, or you can do up to a week turn around for less. I recommend this particular tool,

but you could also pay someone to do this as well. You could go on Elance, for example, and find someone to transcribe the

content for you.

Once you get that content back from Speechpad or whatever transcription service, it’s time for you to neaten it up and

transform it. So it might be you, it might be someone else in your team, but essentially, you want to neaten up the

transcribed content, take out the “umms” and the “ahhs” and the stuff that’s not important that was said in the interview

and ensure that it’s fresh, well organized, and ready to go.

If you follow this process, it makes it substantially easier to create content than if you were to create content from

scratch. It does take commitment and dedication from subject matter experts on your team, but I don’t think there’s any

getting around it. You cannot pay someone who is not an expert to talk about topics that they are not an expert in. It

doesn’t work, and people can see through it. So this is the way to go to achieve the level of quality your audience

deserves.

TIME TO BUILD YOUR CONTENT

The other thing to think about as you’re writing, is the importance of the title. Titles are super duper key. You’ve got to

focus on the headlines. Think about the ebook and blog title before publishing and ask yourself “Is this something that

someone would click on?” Upworthy.com is a site that does a really good job of headline writing.

ACHIEVING STELLAR DESIGNIt’s not just about function, it’s also about form. How do

you make sure that your designer knows what they’re

doing? Before sending your content pillar to a graphic

designer make sure your draft is as final as possible.

Invest in a brand style guide, a high-resolution logo,

and super clear expectations about what you want

back.

You can find great designers as freelancers or hire one

in-house. In my opinion, it is best to the point where

you can have someone in-house. That’s the best

possible option because you can turn things around

much faster and get really clear on what you need - it’s

just better overall. There are talented freelance graphic

designers out there able to help you translate your

content into beautiful pieces that will resonate with

your audience.

Lean methodology follows the “build-measure-learn” feedback loop. To stay lean, you create or curate content efficiently;

collect data on that content; and use the resulting data to shape future pieces of content. Here’s how you get lean:

• Define Your Pain Points: Offering solutions to your audience’s biggest challenges is exactly what all of your content

should be trying to accomplish.

• Start Small: (Create New Content or Curate): Now, it’s time to build content around your hypothesis. Lean is all about

creating high-impact content using fewer resources which means it’s best to start small.

• Measure Audience Engagement: Audience engagement metrics like social shares, “likes,” retweets, and bounce rates

help inform you on whether or not your content is drawing readers in.

• Measure Bottom-Line Impact: Content marketers are often missing this extra step: Find out which content actually

converts visitors into new customers.

HOW TO CUT THROUGH THE CLUTTER: SET HYPOTHESIS AND MEASURE

CONCLUSIONLet’s recap! Have a strategic editorial plan in advance. Recruit a solid

writing team. Consider working with people that have a communications

and journalism background. Make sure to assign each task on the

calendar for accountability so that things don’t slip. You need someone

that can crack the whip and say, “Hey, this is due. We need it.” Develop

ideas that speak to your customers’ interest. This goes back to the

questions that you found in your earlier research. Make sure that you

have several reviewers for quality control, of course, promote your

content. So it’s not enough to just create the content, you have to

promote it multiple times, not just once but multiple times. Finally,

measure the performance of your content. Using tools like HubSpot and

Google Analytics, you can see how your content is resonating.

So we’re not done yet; I just want to emphasize once more that your

content has life forever. Continue to think about how you might

translate blog content into webinars, infographics, guest blog posts,

unique landing pages and social images. Your content has infinite life.

It’s can be reshaped in as many ways as you can imagine, all you need

to do is map it out on your editorial calendar and have a system in place

to make it possible. Then, one of the most important commandments:

repurpose everything. Everything has nine lives like a cat (or ten).

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