Arnie Kuenn will speaking on SEO Content at SearchFest 2016, which is being held March 10th, 2016 at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I am the CEO of Vertical Measures, a full-service Internet marketing agency that my wife and I founded in 2016. We started primarily as an SEO agency, but we now offer almost all aspects of digital marketing including PPC and content marketing. I have been involved in the world of new technologies and marketing for almost 30 years. Vertical Measures is the 3rd business we have started and run successfully over the last 20 years. It has been quite a ride.
Today my primary role is evangelizing digital marketing. I speak at events around the world and has personally trained more than 3,000 students on content marketing, optimization and paid promotion. In 2015, I published my second book, Content Marketing Works, with my son Brad. One of the best moments of my career. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn.
2) What is a content strategy and why is it important?
It’s been proven that businesses with a documented strategy are more effective with their content marketing efforts. We have seen that be true over and over again. But a content strategy doesn’t have to be a 50-page document or a 75-slide PowerPoint presentation. You can make your content strategy as robust or simple as your time and budget allows. All you need to create is an informed, realistic, and actionable plan that outlines how content will help you achieve your larger business goals. In my opinion, you should identify answers within 8 core checkpoints before you start “rolling out the content.”
· Business Goals: Why are you creating content?
· Content Goals: What do you want your content to do?
· Audience: Who will your content speak to?
· Competition: What advantage can you gain?
· Content Formats: What content types can you create?
· Distribution: Where will your content live?
· Implementation: Who will produce your content?
· Measurement: How will you track success?
It can be as simple as filling out this template with one sentence for each checkpoint.
3) How does one measure the effectiveness of a content piece?
First of all, you need to be in this for the long haul. Content marketing is not about measuring a single piece of content. Yes, I do believe in looking at results and KPIs for specific pieces of content, but it is all about producing useful content consistently over a long period of time. Regarding measurement, I would say it boils down to three metrics:
Lead generation. This involves tracking contact and lead forms where you would measure a dollar value per lead. Hopefully you know that value of various types of leads you receive.
Sales/Revenue. The sale of a product or service equals revenue. It’s not always easy to track the original source (or even the path) to a sale. But you should make every effort to do so.
Ad clicks. This could be an affiliate-style program or straight up CPM ad revenue based on page views.
You might be wondering what about likes, shares, brand recognition, and so on. Yep, they are all important and interesting to measure. But ask the business owner what she really cares about. I bet she only really cares about the three metrics above.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.