Work Smarter Not Harder - Remove the Guesswork from Content Creation with Skip Besthoff

InboundWriterWork Smarter Not Harder - Remove the Guesswork from Content CreationInformation Development World, 10/1/2015

Skip Besthoff, [email protected]

© 2015 InboundWriter, Confidential 2

Agenda

Understand the explicit factors that explain why some content works and others do not.

Learn about how to dramatically improve the impact (ROI) of content creation.

Review actual case studies that show high impact with data-driven metrics.

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What We Want

© 2015 InboundWriter, Confidential


This Is A Home Run

Published: 2/17/14 Traffic ramp followed by consistent activity (43K+ sessions)

Scale = 600 sessions / day


This Is Typical

Published: 2/20/14 (same site, same week)Low level of sporadic activity; 48 sessions

Scale = 12 sessions / day


The Numbers Don’t Lie

Based on recent audits of InboundWriter accounts: The top 20% of content drives 60% of traffic Half of all content produced was driving nearly no traffic HUGE amounts of time and effort drive no value


Perennials Versus Annuals

vs


‘Annuals’ Are Short-Lived

‘Annuals’ might pop in traffic but then die off.

Lot of work and investment for limited value.

Promotion (social, email, etc) may drive a pop, but anything can be promoted.

Scale = 300 sessions / week


‘Perennials’ Drive Traffic Over Time

‘Perennials’ tend to be content written on evergreen topics.

They will develop more slowly

But over time produce order-of-magnitude greater results

Scale = 2,000 sessions / week


Quick Takeaways

Results are driven by a rare few, successful pieces.

Those ‘home runs’ are hard to come by.

Strong, consistent results are only driven by perennials (‘true assets’), not annuals.

WhyDoes so much of my content NOT work?

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Traditional Approaches


Do keyword research up front (rarely done)

Identify topics based on intuition, trends, etc

Write content

‘Optimize content’ with keywords

Tags and links (SEO)

Publish

Pray

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Traditional Outcomes


“A 66 percent failure rate might work in baseball … but boardrooms won't tolerate this level of performance for

very long.”

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The “Science”



The Rules Have Changed

https://moz.com/blog/searchmetrics-ranking-factors-2014


‘Topics’ Drive Performance

Key Takeaways: The keyword as such seems to continue losing influence over time as

Google becomes better and better at evaluating other factors. Search engines are moving away from focusing on single keywords to

analyzing so-called "content clusters" – individual subjects or topic areas that are based around keywords and a variety of related terms.

Please stop these outdated "Checklist-SEO" practices.https://moz.com/blog/searchmetrics-ranking-factors-2014


It Happens Before Pen Hits Paper

Topics drive performance

If topic choice is flawed, downstream efforts are wasted


Many Factors Drive Success

How big is the audience for the target topic?

What is the topic and what are exact terms that will drive traffic to a given piece of content?

What is the likelihood that the target website can be in the top 50 results for the target topic?

Does the target topic overlap with content already on the target website?

Competition

Uniqueness

Audience Size

Are you creating the type of content (e.g. news, video, text) that your audience wants?

Topics (Terms and Relevancy)

Audience Intent


This Is NOT Limited To SEO

While these performance drivers in principal are not foreign to SEO experts, when properly applied these factors affect all forms of content traffic: Search Social Total Sessions (Visits) Total Pageviews


What About My Spreadsheets?

Unless you take into account ALL those factors, it is probably a waste of time: Most people cherry pick a couple of terms / a couple of

data points More often than not this does not create any data / insight

of value

This also tends to promote a ‘keyword’-centric mindset.

What to do?


Writing ‘Good’ Content Is Hard


Intuition Isn’t Always Right


Step 1: There Is No Magic Bullet


Step 2: Think Before You Write

High quality content creation takes HOURS to create.

90% of it fails.

http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/blogger-research/


Step 2A: Reverse Engineer

Like it or not, it doesn’t matter what you think is valuable.

What does matter:– What your ‘content

customers’ want– How a search engine or

web platform (social) will match your content to users


Step 3: Use Data/Analytics Carefully

It’s better not to use it at all than abuse it. Applications to consider:

CATEGORY REASON EXAMPLES

‘True’ topic research tools- note: avoid idea ‘generators’

Critical to get topic right InboundWriter

Content Management Platforms

Personas, Calendars, Workflow

NewsCred, DivvyHQ, Kapost, CoSchedule

Analytics / ROI Have to measure Google Analytics, Adobe, Uberflip, Curata


Step 4: Use Common Sense

Write great content and take your time. When in doubt – less is more.

CRITICAL FACTORS IMPORTANT FACTORS

Answer important questions

Length

Engage users Images

Understand user intent <-> content type

SEO / “good hygiene”


Step 5: Measure

A simple test – answer these questions:– How do you define, in specific terms, content ‘success’?– What % of your content is successful?– What are the specific metrics you use to measure this?

If you don’t know, you are not doing content marketing:


Yesware Case Study

Yesware is a fast-growing startup developing email productivity software for salespeople.

Yesware’s website is the main touchpoint with its prospects and customers.

Yesware’s content manager, Bernie Reeder, aimed to increase traffic and eliminate wasted content efforts.

Yesware typically produces a piece of content a week.


Avoid ‘Red’ Topics, Do ‘Green’

Original Topic: Sales Email Frequency GuideActual Title: The Complete Sales Email Frequency

Guide: Why It Pays To Follow-Up

Original Topic: Sales Follow Up Email Templates Actual Title: 4 Sales Follow Up Email Templates That

Will Get Your Prospect’s Attention

Bernie and her team started to use InboundWriter to forecast the traffic performance of her content.

Before spending hours on a piece, they spent 5 minutes in InboundWriter to make sure their idea was worth the effort.


Yesware Results: Huge Impact

The ‘green’ topic had 3x the traffic in 40% of the time.

Traffic to the Yesware blog almost doubled within 6 months.


Yesware: 20x+ Improvement

13.1x

3.4x

8x

26.9x

4.8x6.3x

12.2x

22.2x

3.4x

13.1x


Typical Results: ‘Predictive Analytics’

InboundWriter has completed over 40 formal case studies, measuring InboundWriter traffic versus status quo.

2.4x

3.4x

2.4x

4.4x3.6x

7.3x


Concluding Thoughts: Jay Baer

Today’s content marketing success formula is a lot different from 2013 and prior … [it] is about home runs and strikeouts.

You need to figure out what creates home runs and do more of that, while purposefully and surgically eliminating strikeouts

You may feel like you accomplished something because you made your three posts/week goal. You are not. You are just lighting money on fire, $900 at a time.

Jay BaerNYT best-selling authorContent Marketing ExpertFounder, Convince & Convert

Questions and Thank you!!!For additional information:[email protected]

http://www.inboundwriter.com/

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Work Smarter Not Harder - Remove the Guesswork from Content Creation with Skip Besthoff