This article also appeared in Social Media Today.
I did a content marketing experiment — and failed.
With a little twist, I wanted to demonstrate a content marketing experiment — particularly for smaller companies. And how it could work for your business, too.
The experiment yielded some interesting results, and I thought I would share them.
The Content Theme: Blogger outreach
About six months ago, I decided to practice some focus here on the blog. I’m passionate about most things related to digital marketing, but I decided to create some content around blogger outreach.
Why not? I hadn’t written extensively about the topic in the past, but I had published at least a few relevant posts. So here’s what I did:
- I wrote a couple of new posts specifically about blogger outreach over a couple of months. Not excessively many, but a few.
- I set up a resource page where I collected all relevant posts, to connect them with each other and to show search engines that these posts belong together. I also linked the resource page from my universal sidebar to demonstrate that I care a little extra about this content.
- I also made sure to secure some backlinks and do some keyword research.
- I did a couple of newsletter send-outs.
- I hosted an open after-work meeting where we discussed blogger outreach.
- I pushed a little extra for a particular technique (honeymoon outreach) to stand out more.
- I focused all my social media updates on blogger outreach and discussed the topic.
So, what happened?
I Got Remarkable Results…
I did get a little more organic search engine traffic on blogger outreach-related queries, but nothing extravagant. But despite how small-scale this experiment was, I still got some pretty remarkable results.
This is the outcome from six months:
- I got three invitations to do unpaid talks on blogger outreach. Compared to none before on this particular subject. I did a few and got a chance to get my message out there.
- I got four invitations to paid talks on blogger outreach. Compared to none before on this particular subject. I did three of them and got my message across to more companies.
- I got eleven hot leads to execute blogger outreach — or help with a strategy. I tripled the leads I’d typically get for this particular service.
- I got, to my knowledge, five great endorsements. “Who knows blogger outreach?” It’s impossible to know how often my name came up in these discussions, but some of them got through to me. Good stuff.
- National television wanted to use me as an expert source in a news story related to blogger outreach. My name came up during an editorial meeting.
- Two agencies contacted me to help fine-tune their blogger outreach capabilities. Establishing partner relationships within the same industry is always tricky, but I was still euphoric about this.
- Countless offers to host paid guest blog posts on the subject. No real good ones, unfortunately.
- Two blogger outreach software companies contacted me to establish a relationship. Since I’m in the business, I value direct contact with marketing software. It might just prove helpful for clients down the line.
… But Still a Miserable Failure
So, how did I fail miserably?
My professional network quickly forgot I’m a PR generalist. Suddenly, everyone thought of me as the blogger outreach specialist.
The result: It took almost 12 months to re-establish my position as a PR generalist.
The insight: Be mindful and choose your content themes carefully.
Please support my blog by sharing it with other PR- and communication professionals. For questions or PR support, contact me via jerry@spinfactory.com.
PR Resource: Content Themes
Content Themes
Let’s use a fictitious example of an IT company. First, they decide on a promise filter for their content strategy:
Promise filter: We make IT easy to understand.
Then, the IT company breaks their core message down into four business-critical content themes:
Q1 content theme: We make people understand the Internet of Things (IoT).
Q2 content theme: We make people understand business automation.
Q3 content theme: We make people understand cloud computing.
Q4 content theme: We make people understand managed services.
For each quarterly content theme, they produce content packages. Each content package could contain the following:
- Infographics
- Blog Articles
- Whitepapers
- Social Media Updates
- Landing Pages
- Lead Magnets
- Swipe Files
- Template Files
- Content Upgrades
- Online Courses
- Podcast Episodes
- Livestreams
- Email Send-Outs
- Events
- Case Studies
- Webinars
- Video Tutorials
- Interactive Quizzes
- Press Releases
- E‑Books
- Testimonials
- Influencer Collaborations
- Mobile Apps
- Slide Presentations
Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy
