How to: Create a Content Strategy (only 652 steps!) By Ian Lurie This is a really, really, really long piece. There's no TL;DR version. That's because a content audit has a lot of steps. I've tried to break them down and explain each one, so that a writer who knows their way around a computer or a marketing geek who knows how to write can take this and do a complete audit. First, a content strategy is not an inventory or an audit. An inventory is a simple list. Inventories existing contentAnalyzes the competitionDraws conclusionsLays out a strategy based on those conclusions #1 is the most mechanically-involved task, because you have to grab a lot of data and mush it all together. #2 is the shortest. #3 and 4 are the most demanding (for me, anyway) because I have to suss out impossible-to-automate marketing stuff that's essential to success. Before you start A few basic assumptions, and some sacred cows to slay: What you're auditing One of the team here at Portent read a draft of this and said, "This is actually a conversation audit!" Yikes.
21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics Update: Interested in even more Growth Hacking tactics? Buy my book of 100 practical growth hacking tactics! In this deck you will find 21 different areas of startup marketing where you can employ growth hacking tactics. Little tricks of automation or hackery that help you squeeze more out of your customer / user acquisition strategy. It's an extension of a previous deck I created, with a bunch of new content and has been well received at startup events I've presented it at. I enjoy presentations with lots of actionable content so that's all this is. On Slideshare: Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics Growth Hacking is just a good way to describe how marketing is done at a startup. There is a particular focus on the application of technology. The deck speaks mostly for itself, but I'll add some minimal notes between them in this post. A good growth hacker needs to focus on two types of growth. Buy the Growth Hacking Handbook for even more growth tactics!
Why Tom Cruise Should Be Your Content Strategist When he’s not streaking through the Danger Zone on an Impossible Mission, the world’s biggest movie star (yes, still arguably) veers Far and Away from his core competency, occasionally taking a mega-risk with his Eyes Wide Shut. Corniness of that opening sentence aside, Tom Cruise makes for a compelling model of how to run a brand: while his trademark relates to an über-successful motion picture career – and yours (likely) doesn’t – there are many things a business can learn about reputation management and content strategy from him. And just what is the “content strategy” of Tom Cruise’s career? My boss Ian Lurie subscribes to a 70-20-10 approach to on-site content (a slight refining of Jonathan Mildenhall of Coca-Cola’s famous value and significance strategy). 1.) 2.) Just what is the 70-20-10? Graphically represented: Tom Cruise’s 70-20-10 70% of his roles represent The Movie Star. Awesome infographic by Jess Walker. Share it: I should care because…? But 10% content scares me… The takeaway
Learn Growth Hacking: 35 Resources At many technology companies, traditional marketing roles are transforming into growth hacking roles. In fact, the work has become so popular now that some companies are hiring “growth hackers.” They are keeping their marketing departments and hiring growth hackers to work separately from marketing. So what is the role of a growth hacker? Different from marketers, who traditionally are less technical, growth hackers have one objective – to grow the company. In this post, we’ll give a thorough overview of growth hacking, hiring growth hackers, resources on growth hacks, and additional helpful resources. Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Bonus! What makes a great growth hacker? Hiring 9. 10. 11. 12. Growth Hacks 13. 14. 13 Critically Important Lessons From Over 50 Growth Hackers – Bronson Taylor has interviewed many growth hackers. 15. 16. 21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics – Jon Yongfook gives us 21 growth hacks. 17. 18. 19. 20. Other Resources 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
16 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros Are you looking for the latest social media marketing tactics? Do you want to know what the social media marketing pros are doing today? Keeping up with the latest social media changes is not always easy, and our social media marketing tactics may need to be refreshed. We asked 16 social media pros to share the best marketing tactics worth doing today. Here’s what they have to say. #1: Host Social Media Events Mari Smith You can build a loyal, raving community by hosting online events that put the focus on your fans. A fun and effective online event is hosting a “Fan Page Friday”—it’s essentially a virtual networking party where you allow all your fans to share links to their own pages on your page. The event can last as long as 24 hours or more and is a great way to discover new businesses, get more fans, and build tremendous community while increasing your EdgeRank (news feed visibility), too. Facebook Friday is a great way to build your community. #2: Use LinkedIn’s “Your Day” Feature Or now?
Growth Hacking 101 Howdy, Munchkins! This is exciting as exciting can be, because after 8 months of developing our website (well, it could have taken us a week but our clients meant more to us) we finally get to sit down and start sharing our knowledge with the world. So, you may have noticed that Ranky isn’t your ordinary munchkin, the one you can find in every mud hut or a cave near you. Ranky is a Growth-Hacking munchkin, and so we feel the responsibility to elaborate a bit on just what the f*ck that is. Growth Hacking’s Historical Big-Bang I have known this story for 10 years, but only when the blogosphere started yapping about it, did it hit me: This is the first online Growth-Hacking incident, and it’s freaking awesome. Back in 1996, a couple of employees in a Technology firm developed a small web-based emailing platform, to keep the bosses from monitoring their private messages. What happened then, you ask? Fun Fact: One of the Co-Founders was Indian-American. No Wrongs, No Rights, Just GROWTH A. B. C.
How to Measure Content Marketing in Context With Social Media By Kevin Shively – September 16, 2013 Content marketing has traditionally been a difficult thing to measure. As a content marketer, this has its ups and downs. On the upside, as long as you’re producing some kind of traffic, you can lean heavily on word-of-mouth and referral traffic as your by-product. On the downside, it’s hard to defend your decisions if you don’t have good metrics to back you up. As a content marketer for a social analytics company, I work with other data-driven marketers, executives, and teams. Content marketing is becoming more and more central to digital marketing strategies, especially for B2B companies. Knowing how important your content can be to potential customers, how do you identify the wins and losses of your programs? When measuring the success of your content, and creating the strategy for new ones, here are some key metrics for measuring the way your content bridges the gap between your social audience and your sales objectives. Social Shares Visits
What is growth hacking? Just when you think you can know everything there is to know about digital marketing, someone slaps you in the face with a new phrase. During my first year at Econsultancy I’ve been making a point of writing beginner’s guides to any new terms or phrases I find particularly baffling, or that I might suspect other people may find baffling too. Today I’ll be looking at growth hacking. Of course the phrase ‘growth hacking’ isn’t actually that new. Let’s check Google Trends for the term. July 2012 saw the beginning of the rise of growth hacking. So why explore it now? Which then led to the following mini debate… Growth hacking or just good marketing? And then when we’re done we can spend some time figuring out what ‘fwiw’ means. Definitions of growth hacking I feel immediately resistant to any term that uses the word hacking, as the connotations rarely seem positive. First let's take a look at a few different sources for a definition before resorting to Wikipedia. And that’s what shakes things up.
Content Marketing: How to Attract People With Content Do you use content marketing for your business? Are you wondering how to attract customers with your content? To learn about the power of content marketing, I interview Joe Pulizzi for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting). In this episode, I interview Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, the Content Marketing World conference and author of the new book, Epic Content Marketing. Joe shares why a content marketing strategy is important for your business. You’ll learn how content marketing works and what you need to do to get started. Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below! Listen Now Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Content Marketing
Resources for Growth Hacking A week after release, Growth Hacker Marketing is not only a #1 business bestseller on Amazon, but I ended up writing a lot of articles in support of the book. I also did a fair amount of interviews and videos (some of which are still on their way). Before I go any further, I wanted to everyone for their support and say that I hope you’ve enjoyed the book. If you did, please go review it on Amazon–it makes a difference. Anyway, I thought I would collect them all the articles in one spot for people who wanted to read them or who are looking to get started with growth hacking. What Is Growth Hacking?
How to Get Your Boss to Care About Content Marketing The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. This article consists of part selling content marketing, and part how to actually create a content campaign. However, at a more Meta level, it's also about the idea of "how to be good at getting what you want." Like everything in business, from sales to link building, "selling an idea" is all about persuasive speech and delivery. I'm not here to give vague, unhelpful advice like "be persuasive," "give solid delivery," or some other abstract concept that is difficult to act upon. Whether you're selling content marketing to the C-Suite, your manager, a client, or even trying to convince yourself, here is everything you need to make a compelling argument and be on your way to content marketing success. Step 1: Paint a story Think of some of the best advertising campaigns you can recall. All this being said, I can provide some tricks for developing your story:
Intro to Growth Hacking Pintrest, Facebook, Zynga, Dropbox, AirBnb… What do they all have in common? They’ve all used growth hacking techniques to grow their user base from zero to millions (and sometimes hundreds of millions). Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). Growth Hacking comes to solve a very common problem in consumer startups: getting to the first x thousand/million users quickly once the product has launched and the hype has passed. The term “Growth Hacking”, invented by Sean Ellis, and made popular by Andrew Chen, a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines – marketing and coding: Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” In a recent post, TechCrunch defined the three characteristics of a Growth Hacker as follows: First Steps in Growth Hacking for Startups Growth Hacking Resources: Eze Vidra Latest posts by Eze Vidra (see all)