In part I of a content marketing process I covered the first 3 stages: Research, Create and Optimize. This article will complete the process with the remaining 3 stages: Publish, Promote and Measure. I’d also like to acknowledge the inspiration for this series of posts came from the book, “Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs” by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah who themselves are avid content creators – and have built a successful business using these strategies and tactics.

Think Content Marketing Life Cycle

Once you start doing this and thinking in terms of a linear process you realize upon achieving some success that it’s not a process with a beginning and an end. But it’s a cycle worth repeating. At a tactical or campaign level, each time you complete the process with the Measure stage you realize there’s much you’ve learned about what went well and what you could improve on for the next time.

For example, you may find new ways to optimize or promote your article. I realized after the cycle of a recent post on 16 Tips for Gaining More Facebook Fans that creating a discussion around this topic on a LinkedIn Group paid unexpected dividends in terms of visits and links. Whereas a similar discussion with a different group paid little benefit. Some of what this is all about is experimenting and trying new techniques.  Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see the results you expected right away. Content marketing is a long term strategy and you’ve got to stick with it.

4. Publish

There’s nothing too sexy or detailed about the publishing stage. Clicking the button once you’re satisfied you’ve nailed the Optimize stage is a straightforward task. I sometimes like to sleep on an article before publishing it. The next morning I may catch something I missed, fix something or add a new thought.

A final sweep across the “Edit Post” screen to check settings like “Categories” and “Post Tags” to ensure you haven’t overlooked something will save you the hassle of needing to update the post after it’s been published. Also, if you’re using a Theme like Headway you have the option to “Post to Twitter” once you publish giving you a head start on the Promote Stage detailed below.

Ready, get set, go! Publish that article! Congratulations, you just created a new, permanent page of remarkable content on your site. You’re in position to gain more traffic, attract more links and capture more SEO authority! And, you’ve created an opportunity to engage with your target audience which can lead to increased business.

But, you’re not done. If you publish it will they come? Will your audience find it? Maybe – maybe not. It depends on a number of factors. If you’re relatively new to content marketing and trying to build a following (RSS Feed subscribers or regular readers) you’re likely to have a smaller response. But regardless of what level of readership you currently enjoy, promoting your content is an essential, and often neglected next step to your success.

5. Promote

Here again is where you can get pretty inventive on how you promote your content. Assuming you’ve been engaged with your market in social networking via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others, you now have the opportunity to let them know there’s a new article for them to check out. If you’re regularly communicating to those on your permission-based email marketing list you can send them an update with a benefits summary and link to your new article.

You can both under-promote and over do it. With social media be sure not to spam folks and overly promote links to your content.  This will turn your followers off and cause them to unfollow, unfriend and unfan you. As long as you’re genuinely engaged in your networks by having conversations, sharing useful info and building relationships you have earned trust and should feel confident in promoting your content.

In the case of the post mentioned earlier on 16 Tips for Gaining More Fans on Facebook I did the following to promote it:

• Automatically posted a tweet to my @ZephyrMarketing Twitter feed via the Headway Theme, Post to Twitter feature at the  same time I clicked the “Publish” button.
• Took the permanent URL link of the post and shortened it via Bit.Ly (http://bit.ly/55BHkf). I’ll use the tracking feature of this service later to measure visits from posting this link.
• Used TweetDeck to simultaneously post tweets and status updates to my personally branded Twitter account (@gregelwell) my company branded Twitter feed (@ZephyrMarketing – now the second promotional tweet to these followers) and to my Facebook Fan Page.
• Posted discussion questions with a link to a couple of the Groups I’m a member of on LinkedIn.
• 6 hours later I did a repeat tweet with the Bit.ly link, again via TweetDeck to my two Twitter accounts and to my Facebook Fan Page. Note: These are “in the moment” networks and unless someone is monitoring specific keywords in Twitter it’s unlikely people will have noticed my original tweets if their eyeballs were not present at the time I first posted them. Guy Kawasaki did an interesting article on How to Drive Traffic with Repeat Tweets you may want to check out.
• It should also be noted you can now include a Twitter account with your LinkedIn profile, so that when you post a status update to either LinkedIn or your linked Twitter account it will show up in the other networks stream. This gives you another opportunity to easily promote your information to various networks without having to visit each one – a real time saver. I wrote about how to link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile here.
• If the idea of your post is attributable to another source, give proper recognition and mention to them. In my example I had developed the 16 tips from a webinar. I clearly gave credit and attribution to the webinar’s speaker, @jeffwidman which resulted in him commenting on the blog, mentioning and retweeting it out to his followers which I was happy to thank him for.
• Reach out and grab some key influencer’s in your industry like Gary Vaynerchuk recommends and ask them to visit your post. Send them an email, or hit them up on Twitter.

That should give you some ideas on the possibilities to promote your content. Again, do what works for you and the networks you are active in. Next, you’ll want to measure the fruit of your labors.

6. Measure

You’re finally ready to track, measure and respond to the work you did in the previous 5 stages. This can be quite eye-opening and exciting.

What do you measure? There are any number of metrics or key indicators you’ll want to measure. Assuming for instance you’re fairly new at content marketing and your goal is to generate greater awareness and build a loyal following to your blog – your marketing hub – you’ll want to track and measure such things as:

• Total number of clicks or visits to your blog article.
• Number of visits from the various channels you used during the promotion stage. For example, in my case that included Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• The number of times your tweet was shared (Re-Tweeted/RT) by your followers.
• The number of times someone commented, liked or shared your Facebook Fan Page update.
• The number of comments left on your blog and the nature of the comments.
• The number of subscribers gained via your RSS Feed. If you use a service like Google’s FeedBurner you can easily keep track of this.
• The number of leads or conversions to a call to action you had set up (e.g. subscribe to email newsletter, download a white paper, etc).
• Number of times your article was dug on Digg.
• Number of times your article was bookmarked on a site like Delicious.
• Number of back links gained.

How do you measure these metrics? You can measure some of these with the URL shortening service Bit.Ly I mentioned previously. Also, there are WordPress plug-ins you can utilize to facilitate commenting and tweeting that will also provide some level of tracking and measurement.

You might also want to run your blog through HubSpot’s free Website Grader tool. This will give you info on key metrics like the number of back links coming to your site and social bookmarks that, over time you can monitor. I suggest building a dashboard in excel with your key metrics down the left column followed by monthly updates in side-by-side columns to the right.

I’ve found I get the most complete information by having a Google Analytics account. There are also closed-loop systems that track all these metrics and more with a sales funnel mentality like HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Software.

Case Study Results

I pretty closely followed the recommendations and process I’ve shared on these 6 stages with the article on 16 Tips for Gaining More Facebook Fans. And, after 4 days of tracking and measuring here are my results:

• Saw a 580% increase in total visits to my blog over the previous week when I did no promotion.
• 62% of total visits came from Twitter activity (appears Twitter was biggest promotional channel).
• 22% of visits from LinkedIn.
• 16% of visits came from Facebook.
• Gained 4 new RSS Feed subscribers.
• Gained 3 new subscribers to my email newsletter.
• I also saw increases in people commenting, spreading and linking to my blog and received a couple of leads.

I can attest these 6 stages of a content marketing strategy and tactical process worked for me. I believe it will also work for you. Not only that, but when you think and act in terms of a continual cycle of content marketing, you can experiment and build upon your success.

Think about it. You’ve not spent a bucketful of money to try and capture attention via newspaper print ads, telemarketing or direct mail – all of which have a short-term life expectancy and relatively low return. Sure, you’ve invested some time. But what you’ve created are like sustainable assets that will only become more valuable as they attract more links, visitors and search engine authority over time.

I’d love to hear your comments and questions.