No matter what business you are in, if you’re paying attention to current marketing trends, you know you need to create content—interesting, relevant, consistent content for your Internet marketing to be effective. But knowing and doing are two very different things.

Why You Need a Road Map for Content Creation

Does staring at a blank page or canvas make you nervous? Now what if someone carved up the blank page and said “Put something about “A” here, put something “blue” in that corner over there and something that relates to “C” at the bottom. Feel a little better? A little direction takes away much of the ambiguity that makes starting so stressful and inhibiting.

So why do so many of us marketers start content plans without the same kind of upfront direction? See if this sounds familiar: You are in a company meeting, talking about driving more traffic to your website. Someone says, “hey we should set up a blog. I hear that brings traffic.” Someone else says, “yeah, we could have a monthly e-newsletter too. I hear Super Company across town is having a lot of success doing that.”

Next a few dates are set for launching the blog or setting up the e-newsletter. Then what happens? The blog is ready for content but your organization isn’t ready to create that content. The email template is ready but the date for sending it out keeps getting pushed because no one has time to figure out what to put in the first email, or the second or third for that matter.

Why does this happen? Because there is no road map, no upfront direction that says “on this date we will release content about A, on this date, content about B, etc” It’s the blank slate staring everyone in the face, making us act like we’re all deers caught in the headlights.

How to Roll out Consistent Content for Results

Here are a few steps to help you get over that blank page “hump” and generate content on a consistent basis. Generating content once in awhile is not enough. You have to do it consistently to achieve any real marketing value from it.

Step 1: assess your abilities

Ask yourself (and your organization) the following questions:

1. Who can realistically be in charge of content creation for our organization? Who has the time available, the tenacity to follow a content calendar and the ability to manage themself and others to get it done.

2. Do we have  in house people who can write reasonably well on a regular basis or should we consider hiring an outside resource or two to help. You don’t need Pulitzer Prize winning writers; with the death of newspapers, there are plenty of great writers out there that can churn out short articles quickly for very reasonable rates.

3. Do we have the minimal equipment and talent to do video? If not, are we willing to hire someone to help? Again, videos don’t need to be something Steven Spielberg would be proud of, but there is a basic level of lighting and audio that makes a video watchable on YouTube. It’s that basic level you need to be sure you can handle or get help with.

4. Are we, as an organization, committed to creating content on a regular basis? Do we all know why we need to do this? What is the goal for creating the content? Website traffic? Higher search rankings? Increase your subscriber base? Whatever the goal is, make sure it’s front and center and everyone understands and is committed to it.

Step 2: brainstorm

Write down every possible idea you have ever had that you (or someone on your team can write about). Don’t edit yourself or others. Just get all the ideas down. Here are just a few high level thoughts to get you started:

• Solution to a problem that your customer/prospects face. Think in terms of “pain points” Here is a great list of for small business pain points
• Review a new tool/report/idea in your industry
• Curate (and annotate) a list of resources valuable to your customers/prospects
• Any content where you can have a title that starts with the “Top 5 ways to…” or the “10 best ways to …”
• Interview or highlight new or top customers
• Any theme that you can build a series of blog posts or videos around

Step 3: quantify + plan

Most of our clients start with a blog or newsletter. It’s best to start with one type of media, get it rolling and then branch out into something else. You can always re-purpose a piece of content posted in a blog for the newsletter or vice-versa.

So off the top of your head…how many blog posts per week can your organization really commit to (based on answers in step 1) or how often can you send out a newsletter (again based on answers in step 1.) Don’t only think in terms of actual work hours, but consider peoples’ “brain space”—what they can realistically focus on.

Now how much time is really needed to accomplish “x” number of blog posts or a monthly newsletter? Remember to include time for more brainstorming and for letting others know about your content. In fact, you should schedule time for brainstorming and researching on a regular basis.

Then outline a monthly and weekly plan, like the one below, to accomplish that quantity.

Click to Download Full Plan

This is an actual plan we gave to a client just beginning with content creation so it is very conservative in the amount of content created and shared.

Step 4: editorial calendar(s)

“Editorial calendar” is a term borrowed from the magazine/newspaper industry. The publications would use an editorial calendar to plan well in advance what their big stories or features would be. At a minimum, in the editorial calendar you match up specific pieces of content with a release date.

How detailed your own calendar is or is not will depend on your needs. You could do one for your blog and a separate one for a monthly newsletter.

Here are a few examples:

Newsletter Editorial Calendar

This is our own Juicy Results editorial calendar that we use to plan out our monthly e-newsletter. Download it and alter the format to your liking. (You can use Excel, Google Docs, Numbers, any application that will open a .csv spreadsheet.)  It’s not fancy, just functional. Of course you will probably have different content sections that you want to use.

Blog Editorial Calendar

This is a format we use for own blog. All data in the cells are fake, but you’ll get the idea. Note that we include all days of the week but we don’t plan copy for each day. When assessing our abilities (see step 1), we knew that would never happen. But we still leave the slots there so we can easily move items around, add something on the fly or simply be aware of special dates.

In the End…

Establish a schedule for your content output. Having the structure will make creating the content easier to accomplish and/or delegate.

Shortly after taking over Carolina’s position as marketing intern, I found myself ‘tweeting’ the current trends, writing press releases and even composing email campaigns for some of our clients. Tapping into our available technology resources (Digg,Twitter,Flickr) not only allows for  quick information access, but also creates a sense of community with others also engaged in social media. The best thing about it is that it doesn’t exclude anyone, so everyone gets invited to the party!

One of the duties handed over to me was to gain 1,000+ followers on Twitter. Much easier said than done! I must say though, of all Twitter resources available to help in my ‘tweeting’ ventures, Hootsuite has helped me most. I recommend it to anyone who is engaged in more than one social media website. Trust me, it will simplify your life more than you know.

Between attending school full-time and interning here at Juicy Results, I have the unique opportunity to analyze the method of communicating by means of technology. The Internet is changing the way we conduct our daily conversations. Rather than turning on the television or walking outside for the daily newspaper, I can be found checking my Facebook status on my iPhone while eating breakfast simultaneously. Like several others my age, I have fallen prey to modern technology and do not wish to be rescued.

One of the reasons I have fallen in love with this new way of communicating is simply because of the fact that it allows me, well as anyone else interested (even Grandma and Grandpa!), to hold the position of an Internet marketer. Like I said before, social networking does not discriminate, it allows for anyone and everyone (with computer access) to participate.

This low-barrier entrance to social media is definitely something that we, at Juicy Results, are taking full advantage of and you should too! The benefits largely outweigh the burdens. So what are you waiting for? Get the conversation started in cyberspace. Start ‘tweeting’, blogging, bookmarking, networking and soon you too will develop an online presence that will attract others to your undeniably charismatic uniqueness.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your Facebook family to catch Juicy Results’ updates and see what we’re up to.

On May 6th, 2010, twelve days ago, I posted a short blog post titled “What is a content asset?” Admittedly, not an extremely competitive key phrase, but a term with moderate competition (26 million results in Google), that is used regularly in internet marketing.

I created and optimized this phrase for the term that I titled the post, “what is a content asset,” and built just a few links to the page (about five).

Less than two weeks later, I noticed the term in our top ten search engine keywords in our traffic sources. So, I started to review the rankings and this is what I found.

Google
#3 for “What is a content asset”
#4 for What is a content asset (no quotes)
#12 for content asset

Yahoo
#1 for “What is a content asset”
#1 for what is a content asset
#6 for content asset

Bing
#1 and #2 (via Linked In) for “What is a content asset”
Not in the first four pages for content asset.

And, I expect these rankings to improve as we build more links to the article.

To recap, here is the process I used for posting this article:

• Create a WordPress blog post, using an SEO plugin to set the page title and keywords.
• Matched the page title, URL file name and H1 tag exactly to our keyword target: what is a content asset?
• Linked to the post with two Twitter accounts, one Linked In account, one Facebook link and one Digg link.

I did this all in about an hour. Then, I moved onto other business unrelated to this post—only to be brought back to analyze this post because it came up so high in our traffic sources so quickly. I’d like to point out that we write articles like this all the time, some of which rise to the top while others do not. But, it’s this collective and fragmented keyword strategy that brings us our complete traffic. Frankly, we are unsure which will be the home runs, so we make lots of concerted efforts to increase our likelihood of winning.

This is a concrete example of the work we do for our clients, and a big part of our own internet marketing.

Success came from identifying related keywords to our market, generating an optimized article and building quality links to that page. Assuming that we have the right call to actions that will lead interested lurkers into buyers or subscribers, we’ll be earning a respectable return on our investment on this content asset soon.

A content asset is really just some piece of content that you can use as a business tool, either by monetizing it directly (purchasable book) or using it to attract new customers (free article). Often, this content asset is repackaged and distributed in numerous formats and mediums. Think about how a movie is first released on the big screen, broken down into small parts for trailers and web previews, then taken to DVD, then presented on TV. Each time the asset is used, it’s just a variation of the original working in some other way.

On the web, content assets are typically articles, e-books, podcasts or videos. These anchor content assets can be broken up into smaller chunks and used as blog posts, tweets, You Tube shorts, email blasts and even search engine ads. The point is, you develop it once, and if it’s a valuable tool to generate new business, you’re going to want to break it up and use it across as many mediums and channels as you think you can without diminishing its value.

The above examples show how large content assets can be divided and distributed. Additionally, content assets can be aggregated and then distributed. There have been numerous books published recently that are simply large collections of blog posts edited and assembled in a thematic or chronological way.

if you’re involved in search engine optimization, what you’re optimizing are your content assets. If you’re involved in social media marketing, you’re likely using bite size ideas that come from a larger article or white paper, which are also content assets. And, if you’re creating a podcast or You Tube videos, those too can be used in an array of ways on the web to generate more business.

Inventory your site or file server and see what kind content assets you have in your inventory that can be taken advantage of to generate new business. Think: create once, reuse many times.

I often compare it to professional networking or losing weight, as it isn’t rocket science, but it does require a sustained effort of many different types of activities. And, when you don’t see results immediately, it can be difficult to maintain your effort level.

The web is saturated with articles suggesting SEO tactics, but there is little information about how the search engines define their rankings. This is due to the ever-changing nature of these formulas.

While the full details of search engine results is above the scope of any single article, SEO Moz does a bang-up job of summarizing the high impact items used to influence the results. The most current Search Engine Ranking Factors article is online here, and sums up the top factors clearly and visually.

It seems that while there are many new tactics and tools always becoming available, but nothing has unseated good ol’ fashioned quality link building and content publishing.

If you don’t know where to start, and you want to invest time in your search engine rankings, start writing relevant and attractive content. If you’re writing what your customers want to know about, there’s a good chance they will link to it. Over time, with a little bit of sustained effort, you’ll be sure to increase your traffic and search engine rankings.

Write for your customers and promote the content (using Digg, Twitter, etc). It’s a fundamental strategy for SEO.

It’s these things that take a little more commitment to get done if you want results. For example, as business owners, we all know that we need to do at least some accounting, customer service and selling – even if they aren’t our strengths.

For many professionals, you can add blogging to the list.

Like sales, you shouldn’t ignore blogging if you want to get maximum results out of your business. Yet, many of us start with the best of intentions and then taper off, and your blog becomes the dusty treadmill in the basement—creating guilt each time you think about it.

The guilt is because we know that blogging, just like using that treadmill, will get us the results we really want. Yet, we procrastinate and get nothing out of our investment.

So, I offer a parallel mindset to any of you who have made the leap to a committing to a habit that you previously dreaded. Approach blogging like running.

Colleen at Hubspot wrote an insightful post this morning on this very subject. She presents this very sharp and true fact that many of us refuse to embrace:

Blogging is probably the most efficient and most effective way to drive traffic to your website. An hour or two per week and you are creating a marketing annuity. Like running guarantees to burn calories, blogging absolutely guarantees more, free, search-based traffic.

For me, like so many others, the efforts that require small, sustained tasks over time are the hardest to accomplish. But, those can also be the most satisfying accomplishments. You can blog, and you can generate large amounts of targeted traffic over time even if it isn’t your favorite thing to do. If you absolutely hate it, find someone to help you or turn your ideas into content. But, start today and keep it up.

The free and continuous traffic you look at in your logs a year from now will be more satisfying that any procrastination or excuses you can come up with today.

Check out Colleen’s post for more inspiration: Why Blogging is Like Running.