Slides from joint InboundWriter and Zemanta webinar that was hosted by Pelin Thorogood and Andraz Tori.

1. 7 Steps to Creating
Engaging Content
New Tools and Tactics to Create Content
That Drives Business

2. The Presenters
Pelin Thorogood is a new media marketer and
entrepreneur, and was recently named one of the
“20 Women to Watch” in sales lead @PelinT
management. Pelin also serves as a Executive-in-
Residence at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of
Management.
www.schulmanthorogood.com
Andraž Tori is Co-Founder and CTO at
Zemanta. Zemanta, a blogger's assistant that helps
over 80,000 bloggers was responsible for enhancing @andraz
over 1.3 million blog posts in 2011. Andraž is active
in the semantic web technology community and has
recently spoken at SemTech 2011 and Web Fest
.ME 2011 conferences and is slated to speak at
BlogWorld 2012 in New York. www.zemanta.com

3. Relevance!

4. Relevance is Key
Relevant content is key to findability
SEO: Relevant content / structure & links to
relevant external articles, blog posts photos and
other images
Relevant content is key to customer
engagement, stickiness and community
building
Relevance  Engagement  Conversion
Creativity without Conversion = ZERO
#contentmarketing

5. 7 Steps to Creating
Engaging Content
1. Understand Business Goals
2. Create a Content Strategy
3. Unleash Your Inner Data Analyst
4. Know the Right Tools
5. Create Relevant Content
6. Get it Read
7. Measure & Optimize
#contentmarketing

6. 1. Understand Goals
What is your
company trying to
accomplish?
Who is your target
audience?
Are you in
alignment with
marketing?
#contentmarketing

7. 2. Content Strategy
What is your content
strategy based on your
objectives?
What types of content do
you need to support each
objective?
How will you measure
success?
#contentmarketing

8. ‘Lifecycle’ Content
Reach/Acquisition Conversion Retention
Blogging White papers Email newsletters
Online press releases Explanatory videos Social media content
Infographics Customer video testimonials Customer support content
Surveys and trend data Case studies Product tours
Viral video Data sheets Webinars
Social media content Product reviews Blog
Podcasts Webinars Contests
Blog and forum comments Advertising and search copy
Contests
#contentmarketing

9. 3. Inner Data Analyst
Familiarize yourself
with web and social
measurement
Understand how
content drives results
based on your
objectives
Know how to establish
benchmarks
Use data to optimize
and create better
content
#contentmarketing

10. 4. Know The RightTools
measurement distribution production
#contentmarketing

11. Content Creation Best
Practices
Adding links to external content
provides context for your readers
Linking to own content (within reason)
helps with SEO performance
Linking to previous posts builds a
larger story
#contentmarketing

12. Content Creation Best
Practices
SEO best practices define “keyword
focus” as one of the most important
things in online writing.
The “right” keywords are very much
dependent on your content strategy
Engaging content not only requires
the use of the right words but also
the right structure.
#contentmarketing

13. Content Creation Best
Practices
Visual Appeal
Images draw attention to the post
Images help demonstrate your points
Respect copyright laws
Take advantage of image
recommendation tools that provide license
information
#contentmarketing

14. Content Creation Best
Practices
• Skyword study found an average increase of 94% for articles that
included an image or infographic.
http://skyword.com/blog/96-skyword-study-add-images-to-improve-content-performance.html
#contentmarketing

15. 5. Create Relevant Content
Use data to understand what
your audience is interested in
and what types of content work
best
Marcus Sheriden: “Your
customers’ first 50 questions
should be your first 50 blog
posts.”
Be creative
Link to relevant external
sources, including articles,
blogs photos
Tell a story
Call to action
#contentmarketing

16. 6. Get it Read
Leverage your
Community: Social
channels, customer
advocates,
influencers, paid
advertising, etc.
Work w/marketing
and public relations
Leverage
employees
Measure!

17. Community
Find other writers or bloggers in your
niche
Engage them on their content
Encourage them to respond to your posts
Ask for guest blog posts and reciprocate

18. 7. Measure & Adjust
Measure impact of
content based on
objective – leads,
sales, etc.
Measure most
effective type of
content
Use measurement to
drive content decisions
Remember: creativity
w/out conversions =
zero

19. Don’t Forget The
Basics!
Segment your audience
By role, by age, by gender, by
education, by intent, by behavior…
Test! Test! Test!
Across mediums, properties,
audience segments…
Think Life Time Value (LTV)
#contentmarketing

20. Results: eBeanstalk.com
Seven-week results,
averaged across the four
optimized pages:
Reach: Increase in
search engine traffic
(29%)
Reach: Increase in paid
search impressions
(45%)
Engagement: Increase in
time on page (153%)
Conversion: Increase in
conversion to sale (17%)
#contentmarketing

21. Results:
Convice & Convert
Four weeks of results for the 12
pages (5 rewritten, 7 new) on
Convince & Convert:
Reach: Traffic from search engines
increased an average of 33%
across the five posts that were
rewritten (optimized)
Reach: Four of the five rewritten
posts achieved top 10 Google
rankings for target keywords
Reach: Six of the seven newly
written (optimized) posts achieved
top 10 Google rankings for target
keywords within 48 hours of
publication

22. Results:
• Used Zemanta WordPress Plugin for image
recommendations, Amazon Associate affiliate
linking and connecting to other blogs in their niche.
• Would periodically link to LifeHacker articles.
http://bloggingyourpassion.com/how-using-the-zemanta-wordpress-plugin-can-increase-your-blog-
traffic/
#contentmarketing

23. Results:
• Strategy paid off as one of the Lifehacker bloggers took notice and
linked back to one of Blogging Your Passion posts
• Link resulted in nearly 5,000 visits.
• 6 other bloggers wrote about the same topic and linked back to the
original post.
#contentmarketing

24. Thank You!
Pelin Thorogood, Schulman+Thorogood Group
@PelinT
pelin@schulmanthorogood.com
www.schulmanthorogood.com
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
@andraz | @zemanta
andraz@zemanta.com
zemanta.com
#contentmarketing