Must Market

Content Marketing Institute Rock Star Tips
Those CMI guys are Rock Stars. No mistake they are located in Cleveland the home of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. This piece Scooped by Gladys Pintado ROCKS 5 great tips. 

Here are a 5 more Rock Start Content Marketing Tips:

* Newsjack - find HOT topical news and spin it in your direction.

* UGC - make sure you have at least 3 ways for visitors to weigh in.

* Technical SEO - make sure your H1s and page titles ROCK.

* Double Down - when something GOES take credit on social and get a second act out of it (easier to make HOT things get hotter).

* Multi-platform - know what platform does what for your content. 

Double Down is the concept of the HOT can get HOTTER easier than the cold can do anything. Once your content is lighting up with Shares and Likes then share that information with a Tweet. This will pump more shares, links and likes creating a content second act because of the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Great tips here from @CMIContent and @Gtpintado (Gladys Pintado). 

Love the "listen first" idea. Best ideas come from THEM (the sentient mob). #2 is infinitely more difficult since THEY also determine what is crap. The way to pave with golden bricks is to pave and understand how to mix mortar into gold. That is another way of saying you are going to produce some crap its inevitable (and needed).

The 4-1-1 Rule is for every 1 self promotion piece you should RT one and share 4. Had to look this up and the rule was popularaized by the Content Marketing Institute and Joe Pulizzi (a trusted source0. I agree, find your own 4-1-1 rule, but I like the the emphasis on OPC (Other People's Content).

Solid slides, great post by John (@AtDotComSocial).

Gold In Them There Hills
You need GREAT content and lots of it. Outsourcing great content is expensive. What do you do? A: You become a content creating engine creating GREAT content. K, how do you do THAT?

Now you are asking the right question. Sun Tzu said there is nothing as motivating as closing off all the exits. Here are 6 Steps from the Content Marketing Institute to help you create the content team you need:

1. Ideation/topic generation

2. Create Hook-y Blog titles

3. Blog Structure - The Magic Loop

4. Listen for Tone and Style

5. Content Governance (Who Signs Off)

6. Repurposing Content and Doubling Down

Ideation
I create a lot of content since I love being a content marketer. I get ideas from three places:

* What is happening NOW.

* Branded themes I know are important or that I am interested in such as content marketing.

* Listening very carefully to feedback in all its many shapes and sizes (metrics, comments, reviews, friends talking to me over lunch, whatever).

Since the things you could write about are infinite I agree with having a solid plan, BUT I like to leave large blocks open for response, ideation or tweaking. Don't schedule every moment in a content marketing plan. Leave some open space.

Titles SELL Attention
You will learn how to form a title FAST and with hooks. Hooks are things that force engagement. An unanswered question can be a hook. A hot piece of news can be a hook. A branded guru or authority like Forrester can be a hook. I try to live by the 7-word rule - titles shouldn't exceed 7 words.

The Magic Loop
Stories open with connection and hooks, explain some things and then close the "magic" loop by going back the start and closing the loop. I don't write in loops, but by the time I get to the end of a piece I look for ways to pull the opening back and summarize the middle thus closing the loop.

Hear Tone By Reading Out loud
When I want to hear my tone I read the piece I'm working on out loud. Sometimes I record it. Usually just "hearing" the words as they are spoken helps fix stutters and pauses, helps speed up your writing and tone.

Governance is pretty straightforward, but don't put so many layers of approval on top of your content marketing that all spontaneity is washed out.

Double Down
When content GOES learn from it and immediate go back for MORE. Most of your content will meet with average response. Know those baselines well since the minute some new content is setting records for shares or links you want to write the redux piece. Your second acts will never get as much viral lift as your first, but they will get more than the average content since you are riffing a proven winner.