Page 11 - ENGAGE -- Issue #10 -- Fall 2017

Fall 2017
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whether they could differentiate in this area. But the CMO had to be brave and know that when we were done with the work, content marketing might not have been for them. Any good CMO has to make smart decisions about how to create brand awareness, get conversion, and retain customers. Sometimes not everything is right for your business, including content marketing.
Q: Can you explain the importance of a tra c expert who can ignite content by using SEO and other expertise?
KH: What you have described is how the brand makes connections between the editorial, the search, and the customer journey, which helps make that content findable. Now that you’ve made those connections, it’s time to think about the connection you’re making with your architecture. Once the audience hits that content, how are you filtering it? Is it responsive across different screens? Are you managing on the back end to be sure it’s up-to-date? All these things get tied together. The more closely knit they are, the better your content will perform. I see a lot of content marketing efforts only happening on the editorial side, and they are missing the potential of what they are creating. It’s much smarter to do less, make sure it’s of super quality, and do more with it than to just crank out content and hope something hits.
Q: Can you explain how brands can get the most from content after it’s published?
KH: Regarding repurposing content, I think
if we are looking at it from a purely technical perspective, this is a tactic, and it takes effort. For example, you can start with a webinar in which someone is giving a presentation and there is a deck and a live Q and A. Now you have a transcript that can become blog posts and be turned into a podcast. It’s taking the same content and giving people different ways to find, access, and consume it. You can break up all these pieces of content and distribute them across various channels, but again, take into consideration how your audience is going to use it.
Q: What are the best measuring sticks for performance metrics of an editorial strategy?
KH: Assign metrics to those areas that answer the question, Why am I doing this? You should measure brand perception and brand awareness, of course. But if a company can say, “Customers who return to our website three or more times are more likely to buy,” that’s a good lead. Tracking
the behavior of someone who comes from an SEO result is also important. We want to understand what that lead accomplishes. People are sick of the same old crap from pundits who promise you the moon. How do you challenge the assumptions that you are being sold to 24/7 and start grounding your choices in the reality of your company and customers? Too often, marketers get mired in their checklists and to-do lists, and they mistake activity for productivity. If you are being productive, you are getting meaningful results for your business and customers.
Q: We talked early on about how far content marketing has come, but where is it all going?
KH: I think we’ll see far less content marketing in a few years, and only from certain types of industries, such as service industries more so than product-driven industries. For the folks who continue content marketing, I think we’ll see a much deeper consideration of audience intent versus interest—what do people want to do when they encounter our content? Finally,
I know marketers are really being pressured to
Your content
Too often, marketers get mired in their checklists and to-do lists, and they mistake activity for productivity.
demonstrate value and results from the content they’re creating and promoting, so any tools
or systems that help them tie their efforts to conversion and retention will be key.
What is the biggest aha moment or take from your newest book?
KH: What I hear from people is, “Oh, it’s not just me! I’m not the only one dealing with all these content problems!” Just finding out that there’s a framework and set of tools to help you sort out your content—for strategy, road map, implementation, measurement—seems to be
a big discovery, along with understanding the entire life cycle of content and how we can and should be connecting the dots between thosephases. n
is a mess!
The website redesigns didn’t help, and the new CMS just made things worse. Not sure where to start?
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