The heat, light, buzz and hype about all things social has overshadowed plain old content marketing for much of the last 2-3 years.

It’s been kicked to the curb like an old flip phone.

No more, smart content is the go to foundation for every marketing activity your business should be undertaking.

What’s smart content? Short answer, it’s factual, informative, engaging, image loaded and well researched.

But, listening will give you the real answer: analytics, comments, social engagement and shares and of course, sales funnel metrics.

Blogs Still Work but Remember it’s Publish or Perish

A great blog post is between 700-1,500 words, has three images, with a conclusion section, integrates calls to action to drive a desired action leading, uses lots of “white space” and font size is from 10-12 points.

Mobile usage is driving 30-50% of content “consumption” - remember many of these consumers are “patience challenged” Write accordingly.

Content syndication is critical in today’s “technology drenched’ world: use rinse and repeat cycles to reach today’s distracted smartphone in hand consumer.

Make a distinction between syndicating and publishing.

The latter is all about sharing your content on other sites, newsletters and/or even offline (remember print?).

Syndication is pushing out your content in an automated manner via a marketing platform.

Personalty still drives content engagement for both B2B and B2C brands and it’s becoming increasingly more important to use imagery that gets attention in the marketplace.

Who could turn down a hotdog from this server?

Content Measurement is Critical: have a finite grasp of these ROI drivers: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Return Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Engagement, Virality: ReTweets, Shares, Likes, Comments, Revenue or Lead Generation.

Mix and match “snackable” short form content (images, video, infographics) with “evergreen” high value content to drive brand engagement, incremental traffic and revenue.

Build in cross platform marketing on all top tier platforms: Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook using plugin like Snap to automatically “push” content to other platforms or pure play content syndication cloud based services.

Test promoting you content on Outbrain or Taboola. Don’t just rely on “generic reach” of a web site and/or even social media amplification.

Four Basic Content Gotchas to Avoid

Focusing on quantity and not quality. This the chicken or egg question many businesses face. Start with what you know, test engagement and keep moving forward.

Iteration is an integral component of any content marketing campaign.

Not writing content for your audience.  We work on this clients at the front end of every content marketing campaign. Creating a graphic representing the ideal customer, with data below defining demographics.

Forgetting in today’s always on world you need to think/act like a publisher. That blog is going to get lonely. Find the right platforms, sites, content partners, etc. and publish.

Failing to integrate calls to action. These can be sales funnel driven (“sign up for our newsletter) or revenue drivers, depending on your sell cycle, products or services.

You Have Ten Seconds to Get the Attention of Your Potential Readers

How to cut through the content drenched clutter we all live in.

• Headlines drive the visitor into the text; or not! Be compelling.
• Know your visitor - what do they want to read and how do you educate and inform?
• Try to integrate emotion or personality with your content to make it stand out.
• Confusion kills: all content marketers struggle with this. Try to be concise.
• Text should broken up with smartphone friendly headers, bullets or numbers.
• Online visitors read in an “F” pattern, starting at top left of a page and moving down. Learn how to “read” and leverage a web site heat map.
• Go lean and mean with your text. #lessismore
• Use photos, infographics, images; some times the wackier & attention grabbing the better, - check out Upworthy and Buzz Feed both have refined headlines and images down to a science.

Smartphone Synopsis for Frazzled Readers

Great content marketing talks with people not at them.

It’s informative, brief, drives social engagement, is well researched (“curated”), measured and syndicated, integrates images that drive the viewer in and has some personality.