• Do more of what’s working
• Eliminate content that no one reads
• Add missing topics, add content types, and hit all experience levels
• Focus on new topics for which little content is available
• Build a monthly and quarterly editorial plan around themes
• Create steady streams of articles, blog posts, podcasts, and video
• Link each piece of content to other relevant pieces
• Organize your content and make it findable
• Optimize content for search engines
• Place and promote content on external sites

Example: We created articles for Adobe Developer Marketing. Dollar for dollar, high-quality content significantly outperformed their banner advertising.

• Answer this question: Does your content reinforce your brand vision?
• Remove content that detracts from what you’re trying to accomplish
• Build a content plan that supports your branding goals
• Create early buying cycle content such as thought-leadership white papers, videos, and articles that demonstrate, reinforce, and strengthen your brand
• Optimize content for search engines
• Place and promote content on industry-specific sites

Example: We created a series of thought-leadership white papers for First Data to help strengthen their brand and introduce their services in a more interesting way.

• Using your ideal lead profile, determine the key customer pain points and events that will cause your target customers to seek solutions
• Develop concepts for high-value content that addresses the concerns of ideal leads
• For each stage of the buying cycle, create articles, videos, and blog posts to promote your high-value content so that you can pull people into your sales funnel
• Link each piece of content to other relevant pieces so that you can qualify leads by what they read
• Optimize content for search engines
• Place and promote high-value content on relevant sites

Example: We created white papers and success stories for CBSi that they used to generate leads for Oracle and Google.

• Know what your customers are passionate about doing
• Give them the information that helps them do it
• Show them how they can reach their goals with your offering
• Teach them what they want to learn, not what you think they need to learn
• Create content and delivery that teaches them in the way they want to learn—in other words, don’t give them a book when they want to watch a video

Example: We’re the largest outside content vendor for IBM developerWorks—a site designed to be a destination for open source developers.

• Identify the needs and interests of the community
• Attract influencers to actively participate
• Create a content plan around interesting, big, and controversial ideas
• Create blogs, videos, articles, and forums that encourage community-generated content
• Foster dialog in blogs and forums
• Reward participation
• Cross-link to related sites and organizations

Example: We launched an entire developer community for dev.aol.com to help AOL promote their new technologies to Web service developers.

• Identify new market and adoption issues affecting your customers
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your content in addressing these issues
• Identify gaps in your content and messaging by analyzing content by type, level, topic, and how will it addresses emerging and critical issues
• Determine what needs to be added, removed, and revised to address the issues
• Build a content plan that addresses the issues appropriately for each stage of the buying cycle
• Create just the right content, on just the right topics, that moves customers forward in the buying process

Example: We analyzed all of Microsoft’s IT pro content for Windows Vista to help Microsoft better align its content to the post-launch concerns of IT pros.

• Determine what early adopters and existing users need in order to buy from you
• Create core marketing pieces for new customers that emphasize the beginning stages of the buying cycle so that you can continue to add, revise, and eliminate content as the product and market mature
• Ensure that each stage of the buying cycle is covered at launch to maximize conversions
• Develop high-value content to collect leads and create content to nurture leads
• After launch, consistently layer on new content with an emphasis on the later stages of the buying cycle
• With feedback from sales and market research, refine your content and start building success stories
• Optimize all new product content for Web search
• Link all pieces together
• Test pieces by getting feedback from target customers

Example: We did a complete launch around Microsoft Commerce Server, which is a very complicated eCommerce platform. In addition to the standard content marketing pieces, we helped Microsoft make presentations to their partner channel and created hands-on labs with simulations to help get their partners completely up to speed and excited about the product.