70% of marketers don't have clarity on the efficiency of their content strategy. Why? Because content marketing requires the perfect execution of many time-consuming tasks that also require creativity, process management and many other skills. To overcome these hurdles, Guillaume Decugis, our co-founder & CEO, shared with the TechSoup community the methodology we derived from collecting data from more than 3,000+ marketers. These actionable best practices will help you to not just create more and better content but also get more from the content you create and measure results. These are the slides from his talk on August 24.

1. @gdecugis
How to build and implement a
lean content strategy
1
Guillaume Decugis
Co-Founder & CEO
Scoop.it

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Hi I’m Guillaume
Guillaume Decugis
3x entrepreneur
Engineer-turned-marketer
Skier. Gamer. Rock singer.
Content curation service
Launched 2011
~3M freemium users
http://scoop.it
Content marketing software
Launched 2015
Small marketing teams
http://business.scoop.it

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Content has become the fuel of marketing
Goals of content marketers
Content
Generate
leads
Nurture
prospects
Engage a
community
Brand
awareness
Traffic and
SEO
Source: Content Marketing Institute / MarketingProfs

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But does content work?
“Content shock” (Mark Schaeffer)
“We’ve lost nearly half of our social referral traffic
in the last 12 months” (Buffer)
“Crap: why the single biggest threat to content
marketing is content marketing” (Velocity
partners)
“Social Media Publishing is dead” (Me!)

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But does content work?
“Content shock” (Mark Schaeffer)
“We’ve lost nearly half of our social referral traffic
in the last 12 months” (Buffer)
“Crap: why the single biggest threat to content
marketing is content marketing” (Velocity
partners)
“Social Media Publishing is dead” (Me!)
“It’s too easy to produce great engaging content
that goes viral” (no one)

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Content is a struggle
Source: Content Marketing Institute / MarketingProfs
(Which is an optimistic way of saying 70% are not…)

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Google and Social Networks want you
to produce fresh quality content constantly

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But it’s hard because content
is costly and time-consuming to produce

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Content distribution is complex
Organic reach is declining as social networks want you to pay to play

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Most content doesn’t generate engagement

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And so is understanding what works and what doesn’t

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Back to the basics
Content marketing
=
Publishing and distributing content that drives people to take action

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Lean content marketing = ROI
Produce enough relevant quality
content for your target audience
Content production Content impact
Distribute that content as
efficiently as possible to obtain
(and therefore measure) the
desired impact

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Lean content marketing = ROI
More / better content
Content production Content impact
More from your content

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Do you need more or better content? Both!

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Can you get quality and quantity? Yeah!
“Some “just okay” content that is published will
crush “awesome content” that never gets
published.
“You have to produce average content to learn
how to produce great content”
Marcus Sheridan (@thesaleslion)

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How to create better content? Strategize.
“Answer your audience’s top 30 questions”
Barry Feldmann (@feldmancreative)

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How to create better content? Research.
Find out what content get shared
the most on your keywords
Discover new keywords to use
Ideate from existing content

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How to create more content?

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How to create more content?
(without spending more time / resources)

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3 ways to create more content when you don’t have
more time or resources
Content curation
Repurposing content
Contributed content and co-creation

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Content curation

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Content curation can be way more than social sharing:
curated posts
4-8x faster to create a curated blog
than an original blog
Brings social traffic to your site (not
just sources sites)
Brings SEO value
(Google “BruceClay - SEO-Friendly
Content Curation”)
Brings credibility to your editorial
line

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Content curation can be way more than social sharing:
curated email newsletters
Introduction
CTA
Curated news articles
(or mix of created and curated stories)

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Content curation benefits
SEO & website traffic:
Brings social traffic to your site (and not just
sources sites)
Brings SEO value (Google “BruceClay - SEO-
Friendly Content Curation”)
Credibility:
Avoid being “me-centric”
Third-party content 4-7x more trusted

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Repurpose content over and over again

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Assemble or reformat content into a new format

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Encourage contribution and co-creation

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What we learned developing contributors to our blog
and ebooks
Identify authors / influencers:
Don’t start at the top of the list: target people who need to build their brand and build your way up
Give before you get:
Curate their content
Add value to their content through comments
Refer them clients
Start with an easy ask:
Quote for a blog post
Build up to more extensive contributions
Make it easy / the format they want
Keep them posted on your own promotion efforts
Market your blog to encourage inbound requests

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Example: how we created the lean content marketing
handbook
After 2 years of blogging on lean
content marketing, we created a guide.
We repurposed a dozen blog posts.
Some of which we didn’t even write but
contributors did.
And asked influencers for comments /
original quotes.
Added just a minimum of original content.
90-page produced in less time than
our previous ebook of 12 pages.

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Example: repurpose blog posts into an ebook
After 2 years of blogging on lean
content marketing, we created a guide.
We repurposed a dozen blog posts.
Some of which we didn’t even write but
contributors did.
And asked influencers for comments /
original quotes.
Added just a minimum of original content.
90-page produced in less time than
our previous ebook of 12 pages.

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Lean content marketing = ROI
More / better content
Content production Content impact
More from your content

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How to get more from your content?

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How to get more from your content?
(without pay for play)

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5 ways to get more from results your content
investment
Focus on your content hub
Don’t share content, promote it
Get your team to share your content
Don’t just promote, amplify!
Content marketing automation

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Yes it’s tempting to build on Medium, LinkedIn, etc… or
syndicate content to existing blogs
Publish to an existing audience
Social discovery mechanisms
No set-up / maintenance

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Remember when Facebook told us: “who needs a
website when they can have Facebook pages?”

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You can bootstrap on rented land but you need to build
on your own website
Publish to an existing audience
Social discovery mechanisms
No set-up / maintenance
But
No brand recognition for you
No call to action / little conversion
No SEO
Dependency on their model (‘pay for play”)

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Focus on your content hub

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Don’t share content. Promote it.
Share each new piece of content multiple times on multiple channels
Source: http://marketingland.com/tweet-repeat-power-sharing-sharing-83050
“At my agency, we’ve set up multiple shares on all of our
content for a long time now, and we almost always find
that we get much more lifetime traffic for the content.”
Mark Traphagen - @marktraphagen
Sr Director of Online Marketing, Stone Temple

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Get your team to share your content

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Don’t just promote. Amplify!

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Don’t just promote. Amplify!

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Leverage content marketing automation
Content discovery (inspiration, curation)
Keyword research / discovery
Real-time content audits
Social media sharing promotion (scheduling, programming)
Email newsletter creation
Performance measurement / analytics
Successful content identification / amplification

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Lean content marketing = ROI
More / better content
Strategize (list your audience’s questions)
Research and ideate
Curate content
Repurpose content
Co-create with contributors
Content production Content impact
More from your content
Focus on your content hub
Don’t share content, promote it
Get your team to share your content
Don’t just promote, amplify!
Content marketing automation

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Thank you!
Guillaume Decugis
Co-Founder & CEO
Scoop.it
More on lean content marketing on:
http://blog.scoop.it