A 3-Step Content Marketing Plan for Online Editors

The key to content marketing is to let the content market itself

Maria Pergolino, director of marketing for Marketo recently gave a presentation on how to be a better content marketer. Her key points for succeeding in content marketing?

• Create content that sells
• Create a content map
• Optimize content for search
• Repurpose content
• Learn to succeed even in situations with little or no content

These seem like fundamental elements of writing any blog on a website, but there was a time when we didn’t optimize for search and we didn’t repurpose content. When we had little or no content, we created an archive of bland, boring and useless content that would never market itself.

Let content market itself

Good content needs less work from you and more work from your readers. In order to have content that is easily spread and liked, you only need to produce it and spread the word. If the content is valuable—or catchy at the very least—you’ll be fine.

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The first step to writing a blog that gets passed around and goes viral is to write a great headline. Content Marketing runs very parallel with Email Marketing in terms of writing great headlines.

When someone has 140 characters to tweet about your article, your headline should provide the hook necessary to get the open. Your readers aren’t copywriters, so if you do your job, they can do theirs more easily.

The second step to marketing your content is to make it good. Sounds simple, right? But let’s really discuss this. How many times have you written a mediocre article just to get it out the door, and because you had a slot in an editorial calendar to fill?

Nobody needs to raise hands, but we all know that there is content you produce that you are really proud of, and there is content that you are less proud of.

If you’re just writing content to fill a slot, I can promise you that the readers will feel your dispassion and will be less likely to pass it along.

When you need a booster, submit it to content-sharing sites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com.

The third step is to produce the content in whichever format works best for the material. Content marketing isn’t just about writing articles. If what you’re talking about is better suited for a video, then so be it. If it’s an amazing web app, even better.

Once you’ve done it a few times, a 30 second web video can come together even easier than a 300 word article. For SEO purposes, make sure you include a transcript with any online video or non-text piece of content that you’re marketing.