Seek’s 7-step approach to content marketing

One of the biggest challenges facing marketers in the current digital landscape is going beyond traditional forms of brand marketing to effectively engage customers via social and online channels.

According to Brad Smith (pictured), content marketing manager at Seek, the solution to this challenge is that brands must think and act like publishers.

“Marketing used to be convincing people to come to us. Now we’re coming to them,” he said at yesterday’s Content Marketing World in Sydney.

Below is Seek’s 7-step content marketing framework which they are rolling out company-wide to ensure their brand and content remains relevant to meet the changing needs of their customers.

1. Define Objectives

Develop a content marketing mission statement to help define overall objectives of what should be achieved by content. Content should be unique and aim to enlighten, advise and support product offerings.

2. Content plan

Developing and implementing an effective content plan is critical to ensuring you’re getting the most out of your content. The starting point of a content plan is outlining the strategic content pillars which enable a focus on content creation as marketing efforts progress. An effective content plan should also take SEO and brand voice into consideration.

3. Establish processes

Before content is shared via online and social channels, editorial guidelines and governance should be established to create a uniform framework across the company. Everyone likes to ‘dip their toe’ in social media, but without strategic objectives and guidelines it will have no impact. Set up social media training for the broader business to ensure all members of the organisation understand how online & social fits into the overall business objectives and content strategy.

4. Recruit and manage contributors

Every organisation is doing it differently – whether content creators are sourced in-house from an organisation or hired externally, it is important that the people who are creating your content are maintaining the brand voice.

5. Prepare channels and platforms

Consider where your content will live and what sort of experience is offered on each channel. For example, the way an article is marketed on Twitter may have different messaging on another channel such as Facebook. At Seek, content marketers are working with all areas of the business to determine the role of seek owned properties and integrating this into their content marketing strategy.

6. Distribution

Creating content is only the first piece of the puzzle – how do you then ensure your customers find your content? With all brands now jumping on the content bandwagon, the web is inundated with an explosion of content. Brands need to make sure they are doing all they can to ensure their content is getting in front of their customers. This can be achieved by sharing content via a variety of online platforms and investing in social and online advertising.

7. Measure, learn and optimise

Perhaps the most important step of the process – measure your efforts to improve the process in the future. Determine key metrics then build, test and learn. Optimise content based on what’s working and what’s not.

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