How To Create Valuable Content? Blog Posts Stories & the Art of Content Promotion
When you’re reading content on a blog or website or somewhere else, you’re only looking at the final product. But that text is the result of a process and a strategy, it didn’t just magically appear on the page. That’s why we’re happy to take you on a trip behind the scenes for a look at how the finished product is created.
But remember, the results we achieve as content marketers would not be possible without the help of #Synerise People from other teams. That's why today we will talk a bit about how to work together to be effective, like each other and regularly provide you with valuable content.
First, a short story. Not so long ago (in 1920s) and not so far away (accounts differ as to whether it happened in Luchow’s restaurant in Manhattan or in a cafe at the Algonquin Hotel in NY), writer Ernest Hemingway took part in a challenge to write the shortest and saddest tale possible.
You won't be surprised to learn that he won. The story (created on a napkin) was: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn".
Of course, we will never be able to compare ourselves to the author of "The Old Man and the Sea", but this anecdote accurately illustrates what we do every day—describe products, using emotions, in an accessible and concise way. And it really works – according to Demand Metric data companies running blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those without.
Content People (and company) to the rescue
As I wrote some time ago, content marketing is not only the art of creating content for the writing itself: our main goal is to educate clients, increase customer engagement and get their attention.
Of course, we can’t do everything ourselves. We rely on help and expertise from other departments. Our job is to know the right way to choose the perfect words, communicate ideas, and simplify technical language to make it more accessible to readers.
Summarizing: On working with text (including rules of writing on the Internet).
But again, our work would not be possible without the rest of our Synerise team. Let’s check it out on the example of the Monthly RoundUp series, written in cooperation with the CSI (Customer Success & Implementation) Team.
One post - many contributors
Controlling content is not as easy as it seems. It requires collaboration, planning and guarding deadlines by many people.
Don’t believe us? So, see for yourself what it really looks like:
1. Coming up with a topic and collecting research (in the case of Monthly RoundUp’s - talking to programmers, checking our Roadmap, confirming manually if everything works for sure – many conversations and technical work);
2. The most obvious part of the work: writing down the collected information…
3. ... and background work needed for the text, like choosing keywords, using style and language hacks, planning the publication calendar, tags, building internal linking and assigning the content to categories. In a word, editing.
4. Then we add elements of visualization by giving the text to graphic designers. Thanks to their magical abilities, posts feature a consistent color and style and correspond to the topic categories.
5. And last, but not least, the moment of publication! We need to upload the text to the blog, check that everything works as it should (ensure the graphics open in new tabs, avoid broken links etc.) and count on it to interest a wider audience.
Happily, ever after: second life of posts
In the modern online space, there are multiple forums for the kind of content we create and many channels to distribute them. Of course, we make content easy to share with social media buttons in each post but that’s just the beginning of promoting work.
To get discovered by a wider audience - we publish posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, but also, on other websites: such as Medium. Our content pieces often appear on various expert thematic groups and contribute to the development of discussions on a given topic – we’re really happy to notice that other market professionals find them interesting and useful.
The role of social media is huge, that's why working with them is both fun and a serious challenge for us. Writing engaging copy, choosing the right hashtags - finally moderating discussions in the comments.
Hands full of work for every social media ninja.
Last but not least, who is behind all this?
Taking care of our blog would not be possible without a team of people who cannot imagine life without working on our company content materials:
Dawid Cebula – Graphic Designer, responsible for creating blog posts covers and the rest of visual stuff needed
Inga Leder - Communication & Marketing Specialist, social media commander and the Synerise People project MasterMind;
Dominika Adamek – Technical Writer, creating content in the Monthly RoundUp cycle
Jill Alexander – Content Marketing Manager & our native-English copywriter, responsible for tracking grammatical errors and smoothing the language
Anne Bereza – Performance Manager, our SEM&SEO hero
Marta Michałowska – Digital Marketing Manager, blog content human - responsible for content planning, guest post corporations, taking care of publication calendars, posts edition and running Synerise profile on Medium platform