Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher - How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media

Anyone with any kind of digital presence is a publisher. That includes web sites, but also businesses that blog, are present on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, and even companies that publish and disseminate content digitally, such as white papers, e-books, podcasts, etc.


The reason for this shift is clear: it’s easier and cheaper than ever to have a digital presence – and to use your digital profile to market to your customers and prospects. Doing so reduces, and in some cases, eliminates, the need for advertising. Why buy media when you ARE the media?



But as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. What kind of content should you publish? In what forms, and on what platforms? How do you ensure that you’ll keep having things to say, and how will you say them effectively, in a consistent “voice” unique to your organization? How will you know if your content strategy is working?



In this book, Rebecca Lieb - an expert on marketing AND journalism - walks you step-by-step through how to create, disseminate, measure and refine effective, compelling, non-hard sell and non-boring content to inform, entertain, engage, engender loyalty and to sell to customers and prospects.



This book is a strategic overview of the topic combined with tactical advice and how-tos, together with real-world cases studies and examples of successful content marketing initiatives from many business verticals, and both large and small enterprises.



This topic is one of the Next Big Things in digital marketing — already well known to insiders, but with imminent break out potential. So far, there’s only one real book on the landscape. That’s going to change, and change quickly.



Content marketing is a way for anyone selling anything online to do so more efficiently and for much less money than buying traditional advertising would cost. Why? Because if you have an online presence, you control the media. So why buy it?







Features

• If you have a web site, or even a presence on social media such as Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, you're a publisher - and it's time you started thinking like one.

• A digital content strategy embraces words, images and multimedia to enhance consumer engagement and ultimately, conversion.

• Digital content informs marketing, branding, PR, SEO, customer and media relations, blogging, social media and at its most basic, your website.

• What do you say online? How will you say it, how often, and how do you know what's working - and what isn't?

• How do you "listen" to conversations about your brand, products and services online, and develop strategies to respond and inform the conversation?


Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Introduction
Foreword
1. What's Content Marketing, Anyway?
2. Why Is Content Important Now?
3. You're a Publisher: Think Like One
4. Finding Your Voice
5. Do You Need a Celebrity, Spokes-Character or Mascot?
6. What Kind of Content Are You?
7. Overview of Content Channels
8. Getting Tactical: Content Nuts and Bolts
9. Content and SEO
10. Content and PR
11. Content and Advertising
12. Content and Offline Stuff
13. Content and Customer Service
14. Content and Reputation Management
15. Content and Information Architecture
16. Content Distribution and Dissemination
17. User-Generated Content
18. Content Curation
19. Whose Job Is Content?
20. Content Audit
21. How to Analyze Content Needs
22. The Content Workflow
23. It's Never Over - Post-Publication
24. Reuse, Updating, Translation, Migration to Other Platforms
25. Listening and Responding
26. ReMake/ReModel: Repurposing Content
27. Yes, But is it Working? Content Metrics