We stumbled across a tweet from Neil Fletcher last week and it struck a chord. Sonja and I have been talking about how we can promote our book, and the dangers of overselling ourselves on Twitter. Clearly we are right to be cautious about it, as Neil explains in his article, reposted with his permission here:

‘I was amused last week to gain another follower on Twitter.  What tickled my funnybone was the fact that this guy has followed (and very quickly unfollowed) me at least half a dozen times before.

Clearly, he loves Twitter as he follows about 62,000 people.  What astonishes me is that he has about 58,500 followers.

Why am I astonished?  Why do I want every other tweet to say “read my book”, “do you know I’ve written a book”, “have you seen this quote from my book” and so on?

Yeah, we get it – you’ve written a book.  Once you’ve told me that, you don’t need to tell me again – I can retain information quite well.  Now tell us something new or, at the very least, wait a couple of weeks before you tell me again about your book.

No, I don’t mean the other half of your tweets should be “have you read my blog”, “what do you think about this article on my blog”, “thanks for retweeting about my latest blog post”.  (Are you getting a feeling for why I’ve never followed this guy back?)

And, yes, I am fully aware of the irony of publicising this blog post on my Twitter stream!

Clearly, the guy is intelligent – he’s written a book – and, if his publicity is to be believed, he is or has been a pretty good salesman.  Why then is he getting this so wrong?

I understand the need to publicise the book, I understand the need to publicise the blog but, please, show me something beneath the surface – who inspires you, what articles have you read and enjoyed, what bugs you, anything but constantly banging on about you!’

So, we have been warned! We share Neil’s belief that to succeed on Twitter you need to share more than sell – to have real two way conversations instead of pumping out a stream of one-way self promoting traffic. Whether it’s a book or a business, Twitter works brilliantly if you use it to connect with people. Strike the wrong note, and your promotion will backfire. We’ll be treading carefully!

But please do tell us if we overstep the mark….

Neil Fletcher is a product sales manager for one of the world’s largest engineering companies, trying to blend new selling skills with old. Friends and colleagues occasionally describe him as ’never knowingly under-opinionated’.

• You can find Neil’s original article ‘Dumb as a Post – how NOT to use Twitter’ on his blog
• Connect with Neil on Twitter at @neiljfletcher

Other articles you might like:

• RT, @, #, DM? Twenty Top Twitter Tips
• 10 valuable tips for your marketing

It’s all very well creating good quality content but it’s what you do with it that makes the real difference. Social media has the power to turn your lonely blog article sitting quietly on your website into one which gets found and shared, engaging the minds of your potential clients.

We’ve compiled a list of top tips (extracted from our new book) for making social media work for your business.

1. Share valuable content.

‘Everyone loves a generous person sharing information freely. Share information on social media that your customers will value, and people will follow you.’ David Gilroy @consciousol

2. Share other people’s content. It doesn’t have to be all your own content, in fact it shouldn’t be. As long as it’s helpful to your type of customers it is valid content to share. This practice is known as ‘content curation’. Become known as someone who offers things up to others.

‘Make ten Tweets about others for every one Tweet you make about yourself.’ Chris Brogan, @ChrisBrogan

3. Keep down the sales talk. We like to think of Twitter as a bit like a chat in a cafe. You wouldn’t hand out sales catalogues and you wouldn’t bore people by only ever talking about work all the time. Likewise, social media is not the place for a stream of pushy sales messages.

4. Vary the content you share by platform.

‘LinkedIn updates are more business-like than my Twitter ones, and that feels right to me. I Tweet a lot, and don’t want to fill up people’s LinkedIn timelines with chat. LinkedIn is like a forum. Twitter is like a cafe.’ Sharon Tanton @sjtanton

5. Join the conversation. Be sociable, communicate and show up regularly.

6. Be human. Get people to know a little more about you – not just the work you do, but the whole of you.

7. Talk around your area of expertise. Let the golden thread shine through your message so it’s clear to those that follow you what you stand for and where you play.

Valuable tips for your Twitter profile:

8. Keep it short and sweet. With only 160 characters to play with, you need to get to the point fast.

9. Focus on how you help your clients, rather than a dry summary of your experiences.

10. It’s fine to add a bit of personal detail, if you want to attract followers who share your interests outside work.

Valuable tips for your Facebook profile:

11. Adopt a conversational tone.

12. Keep it light, and focused on your clients. What will they gain from following you on Facebook?

13. Make it visual. Upload your logo, and add photographs, Facebook is very visual.

Valuable tips for your LinkedIn profile:

14. State what you want. Make it clear what kind of projects you’re looking for – this will make it easier for potential clients to find you. Use the keywords your clients will be searching – this will give you more chance of being found.

15. Tailor your experience to fit the kind of work you want to be doing – treat it like an online CV.

16. Be succinct. Think in headlines rather than essays.

17. Think about clients needs first. A section on ‘how I can help’ makes your profile stand out.

18. Keep it up to date.

Related articles:

• 10 valuable tips for your marketing
• RT, @, #, DM? Twenty Top Twitter Tips
• A valuable guide to social media and content
• Should your business be on Facebook?

We are hugely grateful to all those who contributed their ideas and stories for the Valuable Content Marketing book. More valuable tips from the book coming soon.

Have you ever wondered why some companies are winning the marketing game, even in a tough market?

Some companies are consistently getting a stream of good leads from their marketing, from their websites and even from social media too. Their networks are expanding rapidly and delivering warm referrals that are easy to convert. They are doing all this without resorting to cold calling, expensive advertising or blanket bomb email blasts. In fact, clients and customers are calling THEM. To top it off, they say that they enjoy marketing too!

Let’s look at some examples and what they are doing right.

Businesses succeeding with their marketing

• Consultant Mel Lester generates 70% of new consulting business through his marketing activity. Mel shares his knowledge generously with the architecture and engineering community he serves via his valuable website, blog, Twitter feed, monthly newsletter and seminars. www.bizedge.biz
• Law firm Inksters buck their profession’s trend of reticence over online marketing and social media. Their expertise shines through the valuable content they share on Twitter, their niche websites and videos, drawing in 20% of new leads straight from the web and bringing a flood of personal recommendations too. www.inksters.com
• Information risk management firm Ascentor are successfully breaking into the commercial market after years of selling solely to the public sector because of the clarity and quality of the insights and information they provide on their website. Their content has pulled in 5 good leads in the last month. www.ascentor.co.uk
• The Payroll Services Centre packed their new website with helpful content, including a resources section, jargon buster, blog, downloads, newsletter and social media feeds. Just two months after they launched their new website their Google ranking soared. Their content-focused marketing strategy now draws in over 60 inbound leads a month. www.payroll-services-centre.co.uk
• Web designer Iain Claridge’s beautiful and inspirational design blog gets 127,500 visitors each month and lands him work all over the world, most notably with NASA. See: www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog
• Marketing strategist Bryony Thomas has generated £800,000 worth of business in three years through sharing valuable marketing tips online for her small business clients. www.bryonythomas.com
• Start up design studio Yoke just six weeks after launch had all the clients they could handle and more waiting in the wings thanks to their stunning, content-rich website, compelling proposition and Twitter relationships. thisisyoke.com
• Endurancelife, a UK endurance sports business went from 0 to 15,000 Facebook fans in a year because of the value of the content they share, doubling the participants at their events and turning them into a global lifestyle brand. www.endurancelife.co.uk

What are these companies doing right?

All these companies are benefiting from a better way to generate business – more effective, more rewarding and far more comfortable than continually pushing at a door marked ‘closed’. They focus on making their marketing valuable to their particular customers and their generosity is getting results.

• Marketing online. They are actively marketing online, opening up their marketing to the generosity of the Internet and they are getting their online strategies right.

• With valuable content. Their marketing and web strategy centres on continuously creating and sharing valuable content, not overt sales messages. Their websites are not just flat online brochures; they are filled with helpful information for their types of customers.

• Clear message. They are crystal clear on what they do and who their customers are. Those that get the best results have a clear understanding of who they do business with and what makes their customers or clients tick. They create relevant content just for them.

• They are generous. They fully understand the old adage that if you give you will get. They freely give away valuable information that is of use to their type of buyers.

• Quality is their watchword. It’s not just any old content they share, just to please the search engines, but genuinely useful, well-produced, creative content that sets them apart from the crowd.

Large corporations are switching their marketing focus for better results too. Intel Corporation creates valuable content for each of its different communities. Their blogs, social media feeds, video and even processor ‘art’ give the company a human face and expand the reach of their messages. See scoop.intel.com.

Even Coca-Cola, long wedded to creative, agency-led advertising announced in 2012 that it was switching its focus to sharing excellent content to grow the business. They announced their new strategy in a creative video posted on YouTube: see Coca Cola Content 2020.

All these companies, large and small have put valuable content at the heart of their marketing. They turn their knowledge, expertise and ideas into information that is useful and meaningful to their types of customers. It is this information that they publish, promote and widely share. Potential customers get information that they can use, whether or not they buy from that company; the company builds goodwill and the result is more interest, more leads and more sales. They have learned to stop pushing so hard and start helping.

If you want to win with your marketing follow their lead: get online, really get to know your customers and commit to continually creating and sharing great content just for them.

Other content you might like:

• 10 valuable tips for your marketing
• What makes quality content?
• Valuable content award winners getting their marketing right

In the course of writing our book we have spoken to many experts and businesses who know how to make marketing work. Large and small, here in the UK and around the world, we found people getting great results by making their marketing genuinely valuable to their type of clients or customers. We thought you might like to hear some of the best advice we found. So without further ado, here are ten valuable tips for your marketing and content.

On marketing strategy

1. From David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of PR and Marketing www.webinknow.com:

“Don’t be egotistical. Nobody cares about your products and services (except you). What people care about are themselves and solving their problems.”

2. From Andrea P. Howe, BossaNova Consulting Group, co-author ofThe Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust:

“Give content freely, with generosity. If you’re concerned about giving away too much or you’re otherwise holding back in any way, worry less and give more. The spirit with which something is offered matters as much as the ‘something.’ And while your value includes your content, it definitely doesn’t stop there. The ones who are interested will see that and want it all.”

3. From Bryony Thomas, marketing strategist and author of Watertight Marketing:

“Effective marketing is about drawing people into a dialogue about their needs, and then showing how you can meet them. If you have a steady stream of interesting and useful content, you always have something to talk about.”

4. From Brian Inkster, Inkster’s Solicitors:

“Cast your net wider by publishing your knowledge, our expertise and achievements online. You never know who might be searching for the specific assistance you can provide.”

On creating quality content

5. From Mark O’Brien, President of Newfangled and author of A Website That Works:

“When considering creating on-site web content for your customers, be sure to know what sort of client you’re trying to attract, know what they are struggling with, and why they might hire you. Once you’ve figured that out, share your expertise generously.”

6. From Paul Simister, www.differentiateyourbusiness.co.uk:

“Valuable content to attract potential customers needs to be a triple punch that leaves the prospect wanting “more, more, more”. It needs to be keyword driven to attract, curiosity based to encourage email opt-ins and relevant, practical and interesting to build the relationship.”

7. From Richard Gauder, CMS Web Solutions Inc.:

“My thoughts about content: create quality over quantity and make sure it is personal and practical for your audience. Anything else wastes a person’s time and is spam.”

8. From Heather Townsend, author of The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking:

“Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes to help you decide what sort of content they would find valuable. Don’t just make it up, ask them -  what information would they appreciate?”

On writing

9. From Mel Lester, The Business Edge:

“If your in-house experts struggle to write then have someone else interview them to produce valuable content. Sharing the credit doesn’t diminish the reputations of your experts.”

10. From James Chapman, Development Done Right:

“Don’t be afraid of not knowing enough. Remember, your bread and butter is someone else’s rocket science. Keep it simple and relevant to your audience.”

We are hugely grateful to all those who contributed their ideas and stories for the Valuable Content Marketing book. More valuable tips from the book coming soon. Next month – quick tips for your website, blog and social media.

Writing – whether it’s blogs, newsletters or longer pieces of content – is the smartest way to spread the word about what you do. However, getting down to the act of writing is difficult if you’re running your own business. It’s impossible to just drop everything and focus on writing alone – there’s so much else that needs your attention. Even when you do get the time, suddenly other things seem more pressing. Should I check my email? Tidy my desk? Have a cup of coffee?

Here are some things that help get writing done:

1. Think of the bigger picture.

The words you are writing are part of your big marketing plan.  An easy small step in the right direction, not a huge unsurmountable hurdle. Get it into proportion and it won’t feel as hard.

2. Stop wasting time shivering on the edge, just leap in!

Open your computer, don’t turn on Twitter, don’t look at Facebook, don’t open email, just start writing. Once you start, you’ll get into the flow.

3. The sooner you start the sooner you finish.

Anticipate the end. Once you’ve done it, it’s done, and it won’t have to be done again. Get on with it!

4. Promise yourself a treat.

It works for small children and for grown ups too. 400 words and I can go for a walk/have a cake/make that phone call.

5. Remove yourself.

Write somewhere different, away from the distractions of your usual working day. A quiet meeting room, a café, a library, even a different desk.

6. Make a commitment.

Deadlines work, (it’s the only way we ever get our writing done!)

7. Carve out some real time, and protect it from other demands.

Five minutes a day to record your ideas in a blog diary, half an hour to plan a blog (and write one too, once you’re really up and running), an hour and a half to write something that addresses the question that keeps coming up, and get it up on your website.

Writing really will make all the difference to your business, so set aside the time, and keep to it.  What works for you? We’d love to know.

Other writing articles you might like:

• How to find stuff to write about
• Stop, look, EDIT. 5 things to check before you press publish
• How to write a good enough article

No doubt about it: focusing your marketing efforts on sharing valuable content will transform your business development capability, but it delivers wider business benefits too.

Here is a story of how a valuable approach to marketing has helped one company to achieve sustainable business success.

Top Consultant’s valuable content tale

Top Consultant is a specialist careers website offering jobs in management consulting and Internet consulting. Since its inception in 2000 the company has built its business by sharing valuable content that people in the consulting sector and consultancy recruitment industry find compelling.

Top Consultant has become a hub of industry news, thought leadership and research, producing popular up-to-the-minute reports such as its annual Salary Benchmarking Report – a comprehensive study of remuneration levels within the consulting sector. All this content is free on their website and distributed via their monthly e-newsletter and active social media feeds. It is just what their audience wants, helping to generate around 125,000 monthly unique visitors to their site – 100,000 of whom are subscribed to their e-newsletter.

Top Consultant’s business development model brings in the sales they need but it has wider business benefit too. Contrast this with business development at another, more traditional niche job board and you will see the difference that ‘being valuable’ can make.

Top Consultant’s business development model

• Focus on: Sharing valuable content motivates inbound leads
• No need for outbound sales team
• No expensive commission structure
• Low turnover of staff
• Business is resilient to anyone leaving
• Excellent client retention

Traditional job board business development model

• Focus on: Outbound sales to drive advertising take up
• 30-40 telesales people
• Large commissions to motivate performance
• High turnover of staff
• Drop in business when a good sales person leaves
• Poor client retention

As you can see, a focus on leading with valuable content has made all the different to Top Consultant. It has helped to create a healthy, happy business.

Top tip from Top Consultant:

Deliver content that is either unique, more engaging, more timely or more conveniently delivered than your competition. Businesses that get success from their content do at least one of these things really well.

Tony Restell, MD of Top Consultant www.top-consultant.com and Founder of www.Social-Hire.com @tonyrestell

Congratulations Top Consultant. You win win a Valuable Content Award!

Related posts:

• How Conscious Solutions uses valuable content for sales success
• Learn from Mel Lester: winner of gold valuable content award for 2011
• Yoke Design: from launch to ideal clients in six weeks

Let’s be clear about what we are talking about here. ‘Content’ is the words on the page you are reading. It’s the copy on your website, the Tweet you posted last night, the videos and images you share. When we’re talking about content, we just mean words, knowledge, and information.

Valuable content is supercharged content. It is content with a bigger purpose; useful information created for a particular audience; content that hits the mark. By valuable content we mean the words, knowledge and information you choose to shape and share for your clients and customers: content that educates, helps or inspires them. Content they appreciate.

Like beauty, the value of a piece of content is in the eye of the beholder. What is valuable to me isn’t necessarily valuable to you. Here is some of content that I find valuable.

My valuable content

It’s Monday morning. I sit at my desk with a packed week ahead. I open up Outlook and face the usual deluge of emails. I delete about 30 of them straight off (starting with the spammy ones I don’t know and didn’t ask for), but there are a few emails I always look out for:

• The niche newsletter from Recourses for marketing services firms like mine which consistently gives me good ideas on how to run my business better.
• The timely ‘Monday Morning Wave’ email from Surfers Path magazine, with a stunning surf photo and links to videos on their site.
• Swimtrek’s monthly missive about wild swimming, with tips on swim technique, photos of gorgeous places to swim and upcoming events I can join.
• Copyblogger’s superbly written articles on writing and marketing on the web.

I valued the content on these companies’ websites enough to sign up for their email updates in the first place; and I read them, even look forward to them despite the pressures on my time.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that all these companies are trying to sell me something.

• Surfers Path want me to keep buying their magazine (and I do).
• David Baker of Recourses has a few books he could sell me (I have got most of them).
• Swimtrek wants to encourage me to take up one of their swimming holidays (I have and will again).
• And Copyblogger wants me to spread the word, and sign up for more of their services.

But the content these companies share on their websites, in their emails, across social media doesn’t major on the hard sell. Their marketing all starts from the premise of delivering valuable information to me, their kind of customer. They understand their customers well enough to know exactly what type of information we appreciate, and they focus their marketing communications on generously sharing their knowledge. Their marketing majors on delivering high quality educational, informative and entertaining content – the kind that customers like me really appreciate, and it gets results.

Making your content valuable

Valuable content is at the heart of all successful marketing today. If you want results for your business, take a leaf out of the books of the companies listed above. Here is a quick guide to help you ensure the content you create hits the spot with your clients and customers.

Create content that is:

• Useful – educational, informative or entertaining.
• Focused – relevant, timely and meaningful to its target audience.
• Clear and compelling – telling a story that people understand & respond to.
• High quality – interesting, well produced, with substance.
• Genuine – written from the heart by people who care.

In any combination, these attributes form just the kind of content that gets read, shared and acted upon. Businesses that really win with their marketing exhibit all these qualities across the variety of content they put out there.

What content hits the spot for you? I’d love to know. And most importantly, what content would your customers really value?

Related articles:

• Are you content with the word ‘content’?
• What makes quality content?
• How valuable content will help you to grow your business

Creating the kind of content that your customers are looking for is the best way of raising your profile and winning more business, but knowing exactly what to write about can feel like a hurdle.  How can your make your valuable content hit the mark?

Five ways to get your content on target

1) Listen. What kind of questions do clients ask you? This blog post was prompted like that. People are always asking us ‘but what can I write about?’ so we’re confident this post is going to find a readership of people who are thinking about their marketing, who may want help from us at some time, or who would be happy to refer us people who know useful stuff about content.

• Keep a notebook. Jot down the questions you’re asked. Answer them with 5 bullet points. Each question will form the basis of a short blog post.

2) Research. What are the big questions in your market? A quick jaunt around the relevant LinkedIn groups, or the liveliest forum in your industry will show you the issues that are raising a stir. Look at upcoming conferences – what are the speaker topics?

• Pick the topic that catches your eye. Draft a simple Q and A blog post that deals with the topic from the point of view of your customers. Don’t worry about being a ‘thought leader’ (you don’t have to give the lecture!) Write about the subject as if you were explaining its relevance to a favourite client. What would they want to know about it?

3) Interview. Uncover your inner journalist and interview a client, an expert from your team, or someone in your industry that you admire. Ask them the questions your clients would ask you.

• Use the interview as a podcast on your website, or the edited transcript as the basis for a blog post. Or two.

4) Survey. 92% of people believe everything they read in surveys. Okay, so we made that up, but there’s nothing like some interesting data to grab headlines, and make an interesting read.

• Try LinkedIn or Surveymonkey. There are plenty of web tools that will let you do this for free. Frame the questions in terms your target market cares about. Use what you find for a blog post, or as fuel for an email marketing campaign.

5) Repurpose. What content are you sitting on? Most companies, if they do a quick audit, will realise they’re sitting on valuable nuggets of content gold e.g presentations, research created for a different context, information your wrote for sales proposals – even printed guides lying around.

• With a bit of reworking you can get these online and make them available to a wide audience.  Make the most of what you’ve already got!

Quick tips to keep ideas coming your way

• Ask your clients and prospects - there’s nothing better than a direct, face-to-face chat.
• Listen in to the top commentators or bloggers in your field – they have their ear to the ground.
• Set up Google Alerts on key terms to find out what’s being talked about on the web.
• Twitter Search tools (e.g.Twilert) are useful – see what’s trending on Twitter.
• Which of your blog posts get the most comment? Write more on that subject.
• What questions do you get frequently asked by clients in sales meetings? Answer them with a blog.
• Guest blog. Ask a related expert to write on your blog, and return the favour next month.
• Share an infographic that explains things clearly from a different angle- look at Pinterest for inspiration.

Other articles you might like:

• 20 article ideas to get you writing again and again
• How to write a good enough article
• Ask your customers for feedback

Valuable content will draw leads to your business. It is a highly effective ‘pull’ or ‘inbound’ strategy but the benefit doesn’t stop there. It’s an equally effective ‘push’ or ‘outbound’ marketing approach, one that your sales teams can use to open new sales conversations and generate good leads.

This article shows you how one of our latest Valuable Content Award winners, Conscious Solutions uses valuable content as a push technique for remarkable sales success.

Guides, not brochures

Conscious are specialist providers of digital marketing services for UK law firms. Sales and Marketing Director David Gilroy is a great believer in valuable content to engage prospects and initiate sales. Theirs is a niche proposition for the top 4,500 out of 11,000 law firms in the UK and they know their market well. Conscious’ content-rich website and social media activity generates leads and referrals but with ambitious growth plans they want more to meet their goals. They take their valuable content to their market with a smart approach that gets great results.

David and his sales team don’t produce any brochures. Instead they have created a stack of useful, well designed guides for law firms held as downloadable e-books in PDF format on their site and in printed format too – guides such as 38 Common Mistakes Law Firms Still Make with their Websites, 29 Mistakes Law Firms Unwittingly Make with their Brand.

“Our valuable guides – in e-book and printed format – are the only marketing materials my sales team needs. Guides, not brochures, open new doors and get us meetings and sales.” David Gilroy, Conscious Solutions @conscioussol

Valuable content campaigns

Conscious Solutions conduct valuable content campaigns around each guide, sending carefully written emails to target contacts with a link to download the guide from the Conscious website. Each campaign builds their reputation as helpful experts in their field and generates around a 15% response rate. If someone clicks the download button then Conscious’ website alerts the team and a sales person will call “…to see if the booklet downloaded OK”. It’s a perfect conversation starter rather than a “hard sell” conversation.

As well as the email campaign David’s team advertises the guide with pay-per-click LinkedIn adverts. David tracks the result of each campaign carefully to monitor return on investment and to learn what works best.

Results from the latest campaign

In August to September 2011 Conscious ran a LinkedIn ad campaign targeted at people whose LinkedIn profile said they worked in the legal sector. The campaign was promoting one of their valuable content tips booklets. The results speak for themselves:

• The total campaign spend was £3,636.
• Conscious’ average ROI target for this spend would be £28,800.
• 1,214 click throughs generated 104 downloads.
• 50 effective conversations generated 12 sales opportunities
• The results was £35,050 of sales with an outstanding pipeline (as of April 2012) of £22,280.

Valuable content is a key part of Conscious Solution’s sales and marketing strategy, and it gets them the results they need. We think they do it very well. A well-deserved Valuable Content Award is on its way Conscious. Congratulations to you all.

Other articles you might like:

• How Yoke used valuable content to go from launch to ideal client in 6 weeks
• Learn from Mel Lester, winner of our first golden Valuable Content Award
• How to keep in touch with potential customers until they are ready to buy

Valuable Content Marketing is the creation and distribution of high quality helpful and/or compelling content in a mix of formats to attract and engage customers.

How do you transform a business that has only ever promoted itself a traditional way to one that markets itself effectively with valuable content? There’s a lot to think about and a great variety of tools at your disposal but where do you start? In this article I want to give you a simple roadmap to help you plan and implement a successful Valuable Content Marketing strategy for your business.

1. Set goals.

As with any change the first step is to know what you are trying to achieve and why. What is the difference you are looking to make through marketing with valuable content?  Greater awareness? More leads from the web? More referrals? More sales? Define the ‘from‘ and ‘to‘ – where are you now and where do you want your business to get to? Write these down.

2. Be clear what you will talk about.

If you are going to create content you’ve got to have something to say. That something has to be relevant to your business and most importantly it must be meaningful to your customers too. Understanding who your customers are is the key. Exactly who are you talking to, and what information will they value? What questions do they have? Do your research and make yourself useful. Create focused content to meet those needs. Read our post on How to find stuff to write about.

3. Pick the right mix of tools.

There is a variety of content tools and types at your disposal but you don’t have to use them all. Begin by finding a way to create all this content. A blog is our favoured starting point because it’s so flexible and dynamic. Whatever creation platform you select remember: content doesn’t distribute itself. You’ll also need to find a way to get your content in front of the people who need it. Search engines can help you; social media is a fantastic distribution channel, and a regular newsletter will keep you front of mind. Don’t forget to go direct too – by all means pass it on to your contacts and prospects if it is relevant. Give it to your sales team to generate leads, like this company.

4. Make sure your website is up to the job.

All this great content has to sit somewhere. You can share articles, videos, e-books and Tweet to your heart’s delight but if the website these pull people back to doesn’t convert interest into action – to return, to sign up to your newsletter, to contact you, to refer, to buy – then your investment will be wasted. Will your current website do your new marketing strategy justice? Make your website into a valuable, lead generating machine.

5. Plan your content like a publishing pro.

Work out the themes you will talk about throughout the year and plan what type of content you will create and share when. Here’s an example activity plan to show you what we mean.

6. Build your content team.

A commitment to Valuable Content Marketing means new skills for many firms. Customer research, design, SEO, social media, email marketing, design, web development and mainly writing. There’s a lot to learn and do. Up-skilling your team and doing as much as you can in-house makes sound economic sense but many companies struggle to find the time, skills and resources. Outsourcing some activities to trusted partners can lighten the load.

Remember: success with valuable content takes top team commitment and company-wide involvement, for it’s the business’ knowledge that needs to be brought to the surface and turned into content. You can outsource parts of the process but we will need your buy in and involvement.

7. Go! Measure, refine, learn and continue.

You are ready to go. Create and share valuable content and measure the results along the way. There are some fantastic free measurement tools at your disposal. Google Analytics is probably the best place to start. Be prepared to learn and change to adapt to your audience’s needs. Measure your success and adjust for even more of it.

And continue. If you focus your marketing communications on sharing high quality information that your customers or clients really value you’ll reap the rewards in increased awareness, interest and sales. Follow these seven steps and make marketing with valuable content a habit – valuable for life.

Other articles you might like:

• Are you content with the word ‘content’?
• The Valuable Content Marketing book – story so far
• Feeding the beast – 5 ways to satisfy the content generation monster

[The 'From' and 'To' concept mentioned in step 1 is taken from Jane Northcote's book - Making Change Happen. Thanks to Sam at Spike Design and his iPhone for snapping the book cover and Claire for drawing up the content calendar].