Aaron Kahlow shares his cliff notes, down and dirty version of a content marketing blueprint, with everything important for content marketing in 2014.

Basic/ Digest...

Get to Know Your Audience

Reevaluate who you are targeting, what they are doing and their personal and professional motivations, likes/dislikes and areas of interest.

Tie in Buying Cycle

Next, tie in their role in the buying cycle. Do they search for solutions/products like yours, or does one of their folks hand them the short list of offerings?

Audit Your Content Assets

What do you have by way of blog posts, webcasts, power points, videos, testimonials, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.? Determine which are really evergreen and which could be tweaked to be more relevant today.

SWOT

Next, start mapping content types back to your personas and do a quick Gap Analysis on the areas of interest and stages of the buying cycle that are missing and what are most important.

Plan Your Content

Finally, create the calendar and ownership of when and who will create this content. Much can be outsourced, curated or partnered with, so it does not all need to come from within the organization.

Social Sharing & Distribution

After this is all done (and yes, it's a bit more complex than above), it's time to distribute the content. Social media is a great place to start, so begin by thinking about what content is best for what channel.

Ads & Retargeting

After you get your social integration strategy in place, start thinking about re-targeted ads on Google Display and YouTube.

Measurement & Attribution

Don't forget the tracking! Attribution and attribution modeling for social media and all other channels is critical.

___________________________________

► Receive a FREE daily summary of The Marketing Technology Alert directly to your inbox. To subscribe, please go to http://ineomarketing.com/About_The_MAR_Sub.html  (your privacy is protected).

December brings many traditions: enjoying the holidays, wrapping up projects from the year that’s ending, and gearing up for the year ahead.

Intermediate/ Digest...

Setting up your editorial calendar isn’t difficult. A basic Excel sheet or Microsoft Word Table will do the trick. At a minimum, it should contain the following information:

• Date
• Writer or content producer responsible for drafting the piece
• Working title
• Your target keywords
• Content format (e.g. blog post, white paper, etc.)
• Call to action
• Status

More fleshed out content calendars can include any or all of the following:

• For individual pieces, they might include approval chains, alternate titles, and target publications
• Overall campaign goals, mapped to each individual piece
• Details on your audience profiles, mapped to each individual piece. Who are you speaking to with this article? What aspect of their experience do you want to dial up, specifically?
• What publications are you targeting with your overall campaign, what’s their demographics and contact details?
• What are your key performance indicators overall for the campaign? How is each individual piece performing against those metrics?
• What are the biggest successes of the campaign?
• What roadblocks or issues have you run into as part of the content campaign you’re managing?

Your editorial calendar can become much more than just a list of dates and targets. It can serve as a centralized workbook where you manage your entire content flow. It can also serve as a strategic hub that makes it easy to evaluate your progress at any specific moment in time.

___________________________________

► Receive a FREE daily summary of The Marketing Technology Alert directly to your inbox. To subscribe, please go to http://ineomarketing.com/About_The_MAR_Sub.html  (your privacy is protected).

Overview...

The Alchemy of Content: A Formula for Overcoming Four Major Content Pain Points”: offers a step-by-step process for overcoming four common content pain points:

Content Development and Distribution: How to organize resources to establish an effective and efficient process.

Content Creation: How to effectively “feed the content beast” with content that resonates.

Content Cadence: How to get the publication cycle right.

Content ROI: How to make sure content is working hard enough for the investment made. Defining your value story requires a methodical approach.

1. Clearly identify KPIs aligned with business mission.
2. Identify the metrics that will work as a unit to tell a value story.
3. Identify the sources of those metrics and pull into a dashboard using connectors.
4. Create an algorithm that weights each metric in relation to their importance to the “story.”
5. Analyze performing and non-performing metrics for each KPI on a periodic basis and use to calibrate approach.

Here are five tips for marketing leaders trying to rebalance their content generation efforts to ensure that key sales and marketing initiatives are fueled with the right kind of content:

• Product marketing must redefine its role as content creator.
• Marketing planning functions must build campaigns as content blueprints.
• Communications groups must be transparent in their approach to creating and delivering content.
• Sales needs a seat at the content planning table.
• Set realistic expectations for global vs. local content.