This is a refined inbound marketing blueprint you can use to grow traffic.
Tip: The color tags below correspond to each role. You may find it helpful to delegate based on color-tag.
Here’s ours, step by step, with notes about who fulfills it. Swift Marketing’s inbound marketing dashboard is designed to enable the workflow below and systematize production as well as track results.
- Boss or editor or company owner: Once a month or quarterly or even twice a year, decide on an editorial schedule about what business / industry / clientele you want to go after. Store this information in Swift Marketing >> Campaigns >> Inbound Marketing.
- SEO Advisor: Identify and prioritize the exact Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keyphrases you want to go after to win these clients. Add this to the Inbound Marketing dashboard.
- SEO Advisor or project leader: Choose the ebook headline(s) and blog titles, based on SEO research.
- SEO Advisor: Create the ebook in SwiftCloud Docs with “Sales & Marketing Bait” checked on the right side, with the dealtype chosen // this will later associate leads from this asset to a given type of lead. This blank book now has a URL and file ID, needed for other steps.
- Writer Level 1 (less expensive overseas writers). Write 1 ebook based on the headline, a few pages (2-5 pages typically), with supporting research if applicable like “Problem X costs business $Y per month/year/whatever, and here’s what company Z did to solve it, and how you can too. ” — case studies, typically, with some supporting evidence. Save the book into the previous-step URL i.e. write the book to fit the title.
- Designer / Graphic Artist: Make the book look good, add in a few stock photos and spend a few minutes formatting, adding some fonts. Dress it up and make it pretty.
- Writer Level 1 – Write 2 to 4 blog articles, directly into WordPress. Save as draft, do not yet publish. // Articles / posts related to ebook matching given SEO titles, with a call to action for further reading, check out our ebook // i.e. 2500 words total approx among the posts, written directly into WordPress as drafts. When writing the blog posts, use the SwiftCloud plugin to automatically generate the eCover graphic and create the opt-in-form.
- Writer Level 1: Create either an infographic (the text / data only – a designer will make it pretty), OR a short video or audio file (informal is fine i.e. you on webcam which a video editor will cover up with graphics, text, etc. – nothing fancy, and we’ll handle editing).
- Writer Level 2 or Editor: Edit the infographic text if needed or video script as needed.
- Designer / Graphic Artist: Format the infographic to look nice, or edit the video so there’s graphics and movement to correspond, with SEO-keyphrases appearing on screen within the video itself.
- SEO Advisor: Syndicate the infographic so it’s tagged, named correctly – i.e. maximize the SEO value of the graphic, or tag the video on youtube etc. as needed to maximize SEO value. Save the file into SwiftCloud and link it inside the Campaigns >> Inbound Marketing dashboard.
- Designer / Graphic Artist: Add at least 1 featured image to each article from legal licensed stock photos or legal community MIT / GPL photos to each blog article.
- Writer Level 2 or Editor: Edit the book, in SwiftCloud>> Docs & Files, and the articles in WordPress. Needed because indian english is different than USA english, etc. even if writer is a native english speaker.
- Writer Level 2 or Editor: In Swift Marketing >> Campaigns >> Broadcast to Audience — Create 5 tweets + FB + G+ posts linking to the blog posts, spread out bit; 2 for this week, and 3 over coming months into the “anytime scheduler” i.e. so they go out over coming 1-3 months. This will take a few weeks to reach equilibrium i.e. so each week, you’re promoting 66% new content and 34% old content for example.
- Boss or editor or company owner: Review what’s working monthly or weekly.
- UPDATE: Chief Listening Officer or Social Media Manager or Community Manager: This person (you, or delegate it) is to track and triage responses on social media or other channels – positive, negative, questions, or enhancements i.e. updates that should get added or revisions to make, and also feed these to the sales team as leads, potentially.
- UPDATE: Influencer & Press Relations. This person (or time-block if it’s you) should keep the conversation flowing with influential bloggers, journalists, etc. and ensuring your content serves as a resource to them.
- UPDATE: Curation & Repurposing Director. This person will take your best performing content and recycle it into other channels. Example: A top blog post getting recycled into a Slideshare presentation, YouTube video, Audio Podcast and Video Podcast. All these will rank well on their own, and are low cost high value ways to reach a wider audience with little work.
The above assumes you’re doing Inbound Marketing with WordPress, though any CMS (Content Management System) driven website will work, though it’s more difficult because you’ll need to generate the call-to-action code manually then embed it – our Free (Yep!) SwiftCloud Content Marketing WordPress Plugin makes this a snap.
This above sounds like sort of a lot of work to a small business owner. It is. Upside: It doesn’t have to be all you.
Also, if you sell “vitamins” vs. “aspirin” i.e. a proactive service, this is going to work better – so the above is best for Business-to-Business or large-ticket consumer discretionary, wherein the buying cycle often starts with research. For a plumber focused on unclogging toilets, or a locksmith getting people entry after locking in keys, content marketing isn’t going to work too well – you’d be better focused on PPC, though if you have a slow day, showing people how to do it themselves would surely increase your overall business.
Notes to above:
- Editorial Calendar: See this Google Docs version for a simple free one.
- Swift Staff can fill any or all of the roles above for you, contact us – we’re building a talent marketplace to connect great freelance writers, designers, etc. to entrepreneurs.
Even more info…