A detailed overview of how to build an audience for your content marketing, with examples drawn from the most successful brands on Earth, as well as from our own experience growing our audience tenfold to over 250,000 monthly readers in the past year. Along the way, we’ll cover four major tactics: 1. Email newsletters 2. Organic social media 3. Paid content distribution 4. SEO

1. The Ultimate Content Strategist
Playbook No. 4:
Engaging and Building an Audience

2. 2
How to Engage and Build
an Audience
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—Joe Lazauskas, Contently Editor-in-Chief

3. 3
Agenda
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1. How to create a killer email strategy
2. How to use social media the right way
3. How to use paid content distribution to grow
your audience
4. How to build an awesome SEO strategy
5. Conclusion

4. 4
How to create
a killer email strategy
STEP ONE
It's given birth to many a new media empire,
and it remains the most effective audience-
building tool that you have as a content
marketer, allowing you to drive loyal readers
back to your site day after day.

5. 5
“We love email. It may sound old-school, but email
subscription is really a hardwired link to your
audience. For us, email subscribers are an
extremely valuable audience that we want.
Every day, thousands of people get the blast
from GE Reports that a new story is out.”
—TOMAS KELLNER,
MANAGING EDITOR, GE REPORTS

6. 6
1. Make lots of great content frequently.
2. Get a good email capture tool. (SumoMe!)
3. Get a good email-sending tool: A/B test,
manage lists, and optimize.
4. Find someone to continuously optimize
your email efforts.
4 steps to starting a
great email program
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7. 7

8. 8
“Email is huge. In terms of distribution,
it’s the biggest thing you can do.”
—NEIL PATEL,
FOUNDER OF KISSMETRICS, QUICK SPROUT,
AND CRAZY EGG

9. 9
How to use social media
the right way
STEP TWO
The simple truth is that brands often invest a ton of
time and money into social media with unrealistic
expectations of what results those efforts will deliver.
They'll assemble giant social media teams and
pump big money into buying Facebook fans and
Twitter followers. They're assuming that if if you
have 100,000 Facebook fans and another 100,000
Twitter followers, getting 100,000 readers to your
blog should be a piece of cake, right? Wrong.

10. 10
Based on industry averages, a Facebook update sent to
100,000 followers will only generate about 70 readers.
Meanwhile, a newsletter of the same size will generate
2,000 to 10,000 readers.
The social media paradox
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11. 11
YET

12. 12
Social media → more web traffic!
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13. 13
1. Focus on making content that people can't help but share.
2. Make it easy for them to share with well-designed, clickable buttons.
3. Be active in engaging and responding to people who share your
content on LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and more to build
community.
4. Embrace social media's magical paid distribution properties...
The solution to the
social media paradox
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14. 14
How to use paid content distribution
to grow your audience
STEP THREE
What do you do when you've invested money
in creating great content, but you don't
have a big audience—visitors, followers,
and emails—to share it with?

15. 15
The Logic Behind
Paid Distribution
If you're spending $400 on
an article, spending an extra
$50 to make sure twice as
many people see it just
makes sense.

16. 16
“If everybody's spending time on Facebook, you have to
reach them there. The key is, whatever you're doing on
Facebook, use that to get them over to your own world, to
get them to subscribe to your email or something else
that's a little bit more reliable in terms of your messaging."
—JAY BAER

17. 17
1. Test out different stories with dark social posts.
2. Target lookalike audiences similar to your own.
3. Optimize until you get your CPC below $0.20.
4. Invest more money in posts that get the lowest CPC.
Our Favorite Tactic:
Paid Facebook Distribution
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18. 18
The Paid Facebook Effect
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19. 19
Paid distribution → clicks
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• Shares
• Organic traffic
• Email subscribers
• Leads
• Nurture opportunities

20. 20
Facebook sponsored posts
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PROS
• Facebook has amassed the a truly massive
data set on its users, making it possible to
target a very specific audience.
• Brands and publishers alike can rest
assured the right eyeballs will be on their
content on Facebook
• Since Facebook sponsored posts can be re-
shared like any other post, this investment
can spur on exponential results if an article
goes viral.
• It's by far the best combination of targeting
and spending efficiency.
CONS
• Facebook sponsored posts can leave a
bitter taste in the mouths of some marketers
after brands' average organic reach was
reduced to roughly 2 percent last year—
essentially forcing brands to pay to play.
• The cost per click will be slightly more
expensive than with services like Outbrain
and Taboola for most brands.
• For B2B marketers, reaching the right
people can still be a bit of a crapshoot since,
unlike on LinkedIn, you can't target for
factors such as job title and company.
CPC: $0.50

21. 21
Outbrain
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PROS
• Premium publishing partners: Time, CNN,
ESPN, Mashable, and Slate, to name a few.
• Outbrain has always tried to control the
quality of the content it recommends,
banning those who use deceptive practices.
• If you're looking to push magical diet pills,
Outbrain is not for you.
CONS
• Difficulty tracking who exactly is engaging
with the content that gets distributed.
• Limited options to examine and analyze data
from your campaigns once they're live. (For
example, you can target content to millennial
women, but you can't see what percentage
of your traffic comes from that
demographic.)
• Outbrain is working on making its product
more sophisticated, which would help
smooth out some of the reporting
constraints.
CPC: $0.30

22. 22
Twitter promoted tweets
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PROS
• Best for marketers who deal with the media
industry.
• Promoted tweets have always blended well
people’s timelines. Recently, Twitter
removed the little yellow tag that
accompanied sponsored content.
• Promoted tweets are still clearly labeled, but
the in-feed design fits better with
surrounding content.
• A smart multi-channel feature that helps
brands serve promoted tweets to viewers
who are talking about a certain TV show or
saw a relevant commercial.
CONS
• Facebook has five times as many users as
Twitter.
• Twitter is great for some verticals, like
marketing, media, and entertainment, but
less ideal for others.
• The way the network defines and calculates
clicks is a bit deceptive—Twitter Analytics
counts any click on a post, such as an image
click—not just link clicks. You have to track
that separately through Bitly to see your true
CPC.
CPC: $1.00

23. 23
Nativo
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PROS
• Scale: Instead of being a service that lets you
promote your content and drive readers back
to your site, Nativo helps you push your
brand's articles onto publishers' sites as
sponsored posts.
• The programmatic platform helps clients
distribute work through a strong group of
publishers that includes sites like Newsweek
and Entrepreneur.
• Nativo closely examines the legitimacy of
traffic to ensure that clients aren't billed for bot
activity.
CONS
• Trust: Multiple studies, including one we
published last year, suggest that a large
portion of readers don't trust native content.
• As owned media continues to gain
momentum, native may not be as appealing
to brand publishers. After all, if you can get
people to spend time on your own site and
build relationships with them directly, why
would you pay another site?
(Full disclosure: Nativo is a Contently client.)
Rather than a CPC, Nativo charges a viewable CPM (vCPM): $12–$20

24. 24
Taboola
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PROS
• Overall, the services seem to be a tad
cheaper than similar products.
• When you use Taboola, you know you're
going to get eyeballs on your work—the
company reportedly drives 550 million
uniques every month for it's clients.
CONS
• See Outbrain.
• While Taboola offers a long list of publishers,
compared to Outbrain, it deals a bit more
with clickbait sites like Elite Daily and TMZ,
so you might not reach the ideal audience in
some cases.
CPC: $0.25

25. 25
How to build an awesome
SEO strategy
STEP FOUR

26. 26
• Still drives ⅓ of all traffic to publisher's sites
• Crucial way to reach readers who need your content
Search Isn't Dead
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27. 27
“I think there's still a lot of [misguided] belief around quantity over quality.
The vast, vast majority of links and shares and amplification signals of all
kinds are going to only the top 5 or 10 percent of content that gets put
out. There's not a whole lot of value in writing a decent blog post
anymore. [There's not a lot of value] unless you can be pretty
extraordinary."
—RAND FISHKIN, CO-FOUNDER OF MOZ
SEO in 2015
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28. 28
“Instead of focusing on keywords, focus on content. Really try to map out
content to your target audience. You want to think about your audience
and what's important to them instead of creating pages built for
keywords."
—AMBAR SHRIVASTAVA,
VP OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR TUTOR.COM
AND THE PRINCETON REVIEW
Content Over Keywords
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29. 29
Contently's Top SEO Tips
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1. Write to engage your audience: Robots don't buy products—people buy products.
2. Build a solid keyword list: Spend time researching which terms will be important
for your brand to incorporate.
3. Track your success: Monitor your progress to understand the health of your SEO
efforts.
4. SEO is not a short game: Implementing SEO practices won't generate success
overnight. It takes time and patience.
5. Keep it in perspective: SEO is just one (important) element of a larger strategy.

30. 30
Checklist for Building and
Engaging an Audience
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1. Create a must-read email newsletter, and optimize your website to collect email
addresses for more newsletter subscribers.
2. Prioritize your social media efforts: It's about sharing good content you made, not
jumping from trendy platform to trendy platform!
3. Leverage paid distribution for your best-performing content, and optimize your
efforts as your content volumes grow.
4. Optimize SEO for 2015, focusing first on quality and the user experience—not on
keywords.
5. Investing in social won't do much if you don't have shareable content. What you can
accomplish on social is less important than what your readers will share for you.

31. Want more insights into the state of content marketing?
For daily tips and trends, subscribe to our online magazine,
The Content Strategist.
And if you’d like to talk to someone abut Contently’s services,
please reach out to us at sales@contently.com or visit contently.com.
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