What is successful content marketing?

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What exactly does successful content marketing entail? I talked with content marketing expert Robert Rose on “The Business Storytelling Show,” and here are some key insights into what successful content marketing looks like. To an extent, you want to become uncopyable.

Operate Like a Media Company

One of the most important mindset shifts that Robert highlights in his book “Content Marketing Strategy”  is that successful content marketers operate more like media companies rather than traditional marketing organizations. This involves implementing media workflows, hiring media skills, using media technologies, and managing content like a digital publication.

Instead of simply creating content for campaigns and branding, successful content marketers focus on building out content platforms that provide ongoing value, similar to how a media company produces content. This could include things like blogs, magazines, newsrooms, video channels, podcasts, etc. The content is designed to engage audiences over time rather than be one-off marketing collateral.

Read next: How do you develop an effective content distribution strategy?

Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Successful content marketing is strategic, not just tactical. Developing an overall content marketing strategy involves determining what activities set you apart from competitors. According toRobert, effective content marketers approach content as a competitive advantage by either performing different activities than competitors or by performing similar activities in an entirely unique way.

A strategic content marketing plan outlines the goals, target audiences, themes, content types, distribution channels, workflows, processes, and metrics that help create differentiation. Success comes down to planning and integrating content marketing across the organization, not just doing it ad hoc.

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Have a Distinct Point of View

In order to create compelling content that stands out, Robert emphasizes the importance of having a distinct point of view. This means identifying and communicating what the brand believes about the world within its content.

Rather than playing it safe with generic, middle-of-the-road content, brands should take more unique or unexpected stances. While this may turn some people off, it’s better than being noncommittal and having people not care at all. Having a stance also makes it easier to maintain consistent messaging and thought leadership across content.

Create a Content Marketing Team

Handing content marketing off to a few random employees on top of their normal jobs is a recipe for failure. Leading content marketers formally establish teams dedicated to content marketing.

The team size, structure, and skills depend on the content activities required and overall charter. But having defined content roles and responsibilities is a best practice. Top content teams act as mini media companies within the broader organization.

Tap a content veteran to build your A-team.

Adopt a Team Mindset Across Marketing

While having a dedicated content team is essential,Robert emphasizes that content marketing needs to integrate across the broader marketing organization. Content teams should understand how their work ladders up to wider marketing goals.

Take Inspiration from Accidental Content Marketers

Robert points out that some of the most sophisticated content marketers didn’t necessarily set out to do content marketing. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and others evolved into powerhouse content machines as part of smart business decisions.

The common thread is using content as a competitive advantage to reach and engage audiences, not because of any content marketing best practices.

Create a Distinct Content Experience

Successful content marketing is about creating engaging experiences that provide value.

What matters is building content platforms that attract and retain audiences over time. This could take the form of a blog, video channel, podcast, digital magazine, etc. The focus should be providing an experience users want to keep coming back to.

Develop a Content Marketing Team Charter

In order to determine what staffing and resources are required,Robert suggests developing a content marketing team charter. This charter clearly defines the purpose, goals, strategies, and responsibilities of the team across the organization.

The charter becomes the blueprint for assessing gaps across content skills, technology, budgets and activities. It provides a way to benchmark capabilities and justify needed content marketing investments.

Create a Content Marketing Operations Model

Leading content marketers develop well-defined workflows, production processes, technologies and governance models for content. This operational model addresses everything from content ideation to creation to distribution to analytics.

Establishing an efficient content operations model is essential to executing a scalable, successful content marketing strategy. The right systems and infrastructure allow content teams to focus on producing great content vs. getting bogged down in process.

Perform a Content Skills Audit

When assembling a content team, conducting a skills audit is recommended. This analyzes what content roles are needed to execute on the charter and strategy. It also assesses existing talent gaps across content strategy, writing, design, production, programming, analytics, etc.

Understanding organizational strengths and weaknesses guides hiring decisions and helps assign appropriate resources across various content initiatives. It also highlights skill development needs to uplevel content capabilities.

Adopt a Unified Governance Process

With content coming from across the organization,Robert emphasizes the need for a unified governance process. This establishes clear policies and workflows for content development, review, approval, distribution, updates and more.

Governance ensures brand alignment, accuracy and consistency across all content assets. It also makes the content production process more efficient. A defined governance framework is the foundation for a smooth-running content marketing operation.

Implement Centralized Content Analytics

In order to gauge content performance and optimize efforts,Robert points to the importance of centralized analytics. This provides a unified view of how content is performing across channels.

Leading content marketers have the ability to segment data by factors like content format, channel, campaign, audience, asset, etc. Implementing a data-driven approach is critical for maximizing return on content investment.

Focus on Audience Engagement

Ultimately, the success of content comes down to audience engagement over vanity metrics like views. Robert advocates mapping the customer journey to develop buyer personas and targeted content that moves audiences through each stage.

This includes assessing content performance through conversion metrics and customer satisfaction rather than shallow social media stats. A real focus on audience engagement ensures content actually delivers business results vs. simply racking up website hits.

In summary, leading content marketing requires much more than just creating quality content. Successful organizations take an integrated, strategic approach that combines the right mindset, team, structure, processes and technologies to operate as a media organization. Following the practices outlined above is vital for any brand looking to truly maximize their content marketing success and impact.

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