How to Build a Content Machine Without Spending a Cent

Lisa Toner

https://twitter.com/lisatoner13

https://ettch.org/

Bad news, money does not grow on trees and people who have it spend it on absurd things, like a diamond encrusted mouse. The same happens with marketing, where ad space is bought at thousands of dollars.

The good news is that we don’t need to be doing this. Smart marketeers think differently and know it’s not about the budget but using the resources you have to create value for your audience.

Your brain will get further than your budget.

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062677914666315776

Packed room @LisaToner13 : your brain will get you further than your budget #spark pic.twitter.com/A6JBaRRNvw

— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6zVzWU95Sw

Website grader generated 500 000 prospects: https://website.grader.com/

1. Right goals and right time

The last examples were very focused in one goal.

2. The value was greater than the required commitment

3. They knew how to reach the buyer personas

4. Optimising every bit of content to get the most out of it

These 4 are the keys for successful content.

We need to invest in the right goals and that means understanding the funnel and pin pointing the right places to act on.

tips for great content

1. Buyer personas

Know their goals and challenges and how they match your company’s offering.

2. Build a pilar and cluster content strategy

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-strategy

BusinessBrew used a pilar page and all their content was driving traffic there.

3. See what’s working for the competition using Buzzsumo

https://buzzsumo.com/

4. Add a meeting agenda item for the hot topic of the month/week

5. Create a blog post for each FAQ your customer support team receives

6. Use the hub spot blog ideas generator tool

7. Identify hot trends via influencers with buzzsumo

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062680553521065984

@LisaToner13 explains how we leveraged #pillarclustercontent to boost our organic growth result #spark @FalconIO pic.twitter.com/raPkbyzzac

— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

8. Figure out what you can automate for your potential customer (for free)?

9. Build a User Generated Content strategy

Example: Starbucks got customers to tweet a photo of their doodles on the paper cups. The customer had a reward at the end.

10. Get creative with video

11. Add structure to your content ideation process

Make a scorecard for what matters in your content.

Reach your audience

Experiment with different formats of content. Micro pieces of content can drive people to your pillar page.

Create a promotion template, a scale of how you wish to promote each piece of content.

Buffer got 60 guest posts and that helped them grow to 100,00 customers.

75% of hubspots blog views and leads are from old posts. That is a strong argument for optimising old content.

structure your experiments

PIE

Potential for change that the experiment has.

Important metrics that we can change, are they relevant?

Easy? How easy is it to run the experiment.