He explains this from first-hand experience. ‘We use data to discover our audience’s needs and optimize our content on their keywords.' 'Nowadays we publish a little less content with more focus on SEO quality.’ 'This results in hotter leads, as they are better prepared and far more eager to buy. You start the first f2f meeting already a few steps into the sales process.’

* Long read * in this blog you will learn

• First: the definition of help content
• Second: why help content results in hotter leads and shortens the sales process
• Then: how to get your help content
• Followed by: why most brands don’t have this in place

Definition ‘help’ content

If you are not familiar with the Help-Hub-Hero model, please check it out. It originates from YouTube, yet is usable for all content.

Mostly the ‘help’ content is defined as ‘always on’. A continuous flow of campaigns to promote a product or brand. I would like to re-define and add the ‘why you do what you do’ as help content. Actually, start with this content first before you jump on the marketing bandwagon.

Why? Because you need to explain first why your (potential) customers should buy YOUR product instead of the competitors' product. What makes your brand special and your products indispensable or essential to improve their lives.

Please notice this is not sales-driven marketing content. This is being proud and show-and-tell your amazing brand and products. It is functional and slightly emotional. The biggest difference with sales-driven marketing is that there are no call to actions, no funnel, no activations, or promotions.

And more focused on the brand than the product. Read more in 'Build a brand before products'.

Help content claims your leadership par excellence. If you show-and-tell your pride and passion for what you do, and know how to do this in an informative and functional way, you proof that know what you are doing. And that’s (part of) being a leader.

Besides, this content is timeless. And it leans heavily on SEO and SEA, instead of paid social media or other activation channels.

Hotter leads

Why this help content creates hotter leads? Because you functionally answer the audience's common (search) questions. You are audience focussed and not focussed on yourself. People like to be serviced and not to be marketed to. 

Based on experience by Bart Verhulst, having the extended help content in place does result in an absolute number of more leads. And a significantly bigger part of these leads is very hot. ‘People are eager, inspired, and educated by our content, even before they contact us’.

Shorter sales process

‘Once you get to the face-to-face meeting, you notice they have done their ‘homework’ and they are very well informed.’ ‘There is no need to explain our platform anymore, the features, and the specs.’ Bart explains. ‘Compare it to buying a new TV. You do your extensive research online for specs, features, and brands. And then go to your preferred brand to negotiate the best prices possible.’

'It's not just about giving them content when they're already researching a new TV, it's about already entering the space before that - and giving them inspiration on how much enjoyment they would get in the first place from buying a new TV.'

‘So with the leads that enter via your help content, you can skip the first and or second meeting to convince them of your brand and product. By the time we get to the table, potential customers are eager to discuss two things - requirements and cost.'

Why it works, in a nutshell

• Your potential customers search for answers and your help content pops up above the fold in Google: SEO and SEA.
• If they do contact you, they are inspired, enthusiastic, better informed and thus it is easier to close the deal.

Case study: PressPage Guides for new audiences via SEO

Practice what you preach, PressPage developed guides with in-depth insights on 'Brand Newsrooms', 'PR distribution', 'PR Strategy and Planning', and 'How to prepare for Crisis Communications'. The content in these guides is about the industry, trends, tips, and tricks. Anything but praise for PressPage. The objective is first to inform based on audience needs, sales are second. 

A bit more context on their guides - they follow the framework of problem education - solution awareness - solution research. Their goal is to provide potential customers with educational content on the pain points they might be having. Then creating awareness about how they could solve the problem. And finally having content that answers their question about whether or not PressPage is the best solution for them.

With these guides, they aim to reach a new audience. Those who are searching for content on specific PR topics and uses Google for a specific query based on keywords. The business case is a long term, this audience downloads the guides, subscribes for updates, and with time, they contact PressPage for more information and detailed pricing. 

Bart explains there is no need to include these guides prominently at the home page or in the top navigation, as these as pure SEO landing pages. And they are doing their job excellent: generating search traffic. Due to confidentiality, I cannot give you the statistics and details of this traffic. You do can find these guides on their www, a bit hidden in the footer. 

How to get your help content

There are a few sources to get an overview of the help content.

1. Google and YouTube data

First, data by Google and YouTube. Do a reversed search query on the keywords your audiences are using in relation to your industry, brand, competitors, and products. What is the first and second keyword they use? Read more on 'Data for content'

Take those keywords as the answers and develop your content accordingly. Keep in mind this type of content is very functional, descriptive, to the point. No fuzz. No blah blah. No marketing. Forget the polished and shiny content, stick to the functionality.

2. Competitors content

Second, analyze your competitors' content. Not only with the data, the first source, also deep dive in their www. Make a list of their help content topics. And create an H1 and H2 overview: what are the actual words they are using in their content titles? H1 is the main title in a content piece, H2 is a subtitle. Google scans these H1 and H2 to rank your content for SEO. This overview is important to know for the level of functionality in your own copy. Read more on 'Analyse your competitors content'

An example. For an automotive brand who specializes in ‘electrification’ (electric and hybrid), this analysis revealed:
• The search by their audience is very functional. E.g. ‘Hybrid advantage’
• The content of their competitors answered this search in a very descriptive and functional way: [H1] ‘The 10 advantages of hybrid driving’.
• Their own content was polished marketing and emotional: [H1] ‘The best of both worlds’.
By rewriting their H1, H2, and copy, their SEO ranking improves.

3. Sales and customer care input

Third, ask the sales and the customer care department for their input. They have the first contact with (potential) customers and know their questions, worries, and insecurities.

Tips for the help content production

Be extensive. Create minimal viable topic content pages with inexpensive content first. Then develop the expensive content for those pages that actually get visitors.

Once you know what pages and topics get traffic, use different formats. You can tell the same story in a long read, in a video, create a white paper or a slide show. Different people, different preferences to consume content. Just make sure everything is SEO optimized.

Create a list of your help content pages with the URLs. Having an overview is always a good idea.

Make it timeless. So you can push this content over and over again. Yet do a frequent check and update accordingly. A quick tip: schedule the help content maintenance quarterly on your agenda. You can do this in batches or all in one go.

Iterate. I get that it is expensive to produce all content at once, especially with the return on investment in the long term. Create batches and allocate a part of your yearly budget. Or integrate the help content production with campaign content production. It saves costs to do both types of content in one go with your agency.

Mobile-first. A bit of a no-brainer, yet often forgotten. As goes for all content, mobile-first is the way forward. By preference even social-first, yet this can be a step too far at the moment for the help content as you seed via SEO and not via social.

KPI

How to measure success? I suggest using your SEO ranking and visitors on the pages as KPIs. Make it a quarterly or half-yearly KPI as it takes time to get the ranking and generate the traffic.

Link to PR

The nice side effect is to use this help content for PR. Once you send out a press release on a new product or feature, you can add these help pages as cross-selling or ‘more information’ to feed the press.

Make it easy for journalists to create content based on your input. Like all of us, they are busy and like to be serviced with information as much as possible. It’s their job.

Why most brands do not have this in place (yet)

This all sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. In reality, most brands do not have this in place. Given the automotive example above. Or think about a dairy producer who doesn’t claim the story ‘why drinking milk is good for you’. Or a coffee producer who has no SEO content on the number one search ‘how to make a cappuccino’.

In my experience, there are three main reasons:

There is a focus on marketing and sales campaigns. This is the shiny award-winning stuff. The help content on the basics of ‘why you do what you do’ is not that sexy.

The revenu is in the really long term. It takes time to develop this type of content and no immediate results. Again, not sexy.

Last not least, telling ‘why you do what you do’ is often overlooked and taken for granted by the brand. We simply forget to show-and-tell our pride and passion for the brand and its products in the rat-race for the marketing and sales revenue.

Summary

The better your help content, the hotter the leads, and the shorter your sales process. This a commonly overlooked and nice side effect of having your content sh*t together.

Affliation to PressPage

For transparency, I am biased regarding PressPage. I absolutely love their platform and in my opinion, they are the best out there for digital newsroom software. Their amazing list of clients speaks for itself. Next to that, they provided me with their platform to publish my own content. Yet there is no financial affiliation. 

Me-marketing

If you want to hit the ground running with content strategy or do data research, don't hesitate to nudge me for help. With over 20 years of experience and helping great inspiring international clients, happy to share my knowledge and experiences.

• 📱+31 6 245 03 999
• 💌fleurwillemijnvanbeinum@gmail.com
• or check my LinkedIn

• How to structure content
• Data for content
• Analyse your competitors content
• Minimum viable content pages
• How to measure your goals and progress

In these blogs, you learn how you can use (free) data for your content strategy. From a reversed research on Google and YouTube to discover your audience need, based on their search queries. To analysing your competitor's content on the H1 and H2 to have a better ranking in SEO.

Including how you can be smarter with your budgets. Produce content and boost media only for those content pages that actually work. 

This data is almost for free, or at a relatively low investment. A search query on Google and YouTube will costs you a ballpark of 10k to 15k. Making a competitor analysis will cost you about 1h per keyword. Creating minimal viable content pages just takes time and effort. 

Get more bang for your buck using data.

Flipping the perspective, start with cheap minimal viable content. Use data. Then expand and scale up with expensive content for what works. It sounds simple and it is simple if you consider a few steps. 

SEO to start

Your biggest friend is data. First, you start with SEO as the main traffic driver. SEO is for 'free', no media budget needed.

Keywords

Get your main keywords in line with your content structure. Read more in 'Data for content' how to get them. 

To start, focus on one keyword or a specific combination of keywords for your pilot project. Then 'Analyse your competitors content' for better SEO ranking. Steal-copy-paste-and-adapt with pride.

Build a bunch of SEO optimized pages around this specific keyword.

Content pages

Create about 5 to 10 different landing pages for that one keyword. Each page with a different setup, different angel, different content. Variation is key. At the same time, you use 'cheap' content. The bare minimum text and visuals to answer the search query by your audience.

Minimal viable content

Meaning, do not produce expensive videos, go overboard in extensive long reads, create whitepapers, set up sales funnels, inspiring infographics, etcetera. Use an excellent copywriter and get great non-stock visuals. And you are good enough to start.

This 'minimal viable content' concept is stolen from the MVP in agile product development. If it works for products, for sure it can work for content. It is the philosophy and mindset that makes you nimble and fast to iteratively learn what works - before investing all of your budgets.

Data

Analyze weekly or monthly which pages are visited the most. Ergo, which page answers the search query and information needs by your audience. Rank the highest number of visitors, and score on the call to action.

This analysis takes time. After about 3 to 6 months you have a trend. Delete what doesn't work. Expand what works.

Now is the time to create that really kick-ass unicorn magic sparkling content. Spend serious time and money to produce this. Now it is worth the investment because you already know what works and what doesn't.

Rinse wash repeat

Do it again for the same keyword. SEO is a continuous process and does not end. Due to changes in your audiences' needs, changes in SEO, and changes in society, you always need to be monitoring and analyzing to learn and improve.

And do it again for your other keywords.

Expand to paid channels

Once you know what works, expand the distribution. From SEO to other channels as social and SEA. Now is the time to invest your media budget for boosting. 

Use your content eco-system for the overview. 

Budget savings

By producing and boosting 'expensive' content for what actually works, you can save yourself a lot of budget and time.  

SEO placeholder strategy

Very nice 'how to' by Klik Proces. Unfortunately only in Dutch available. 

• Why this works
• Requirements
• Cases
• How to implement this yourself

Break the content silos

As 'content' mostly lives within the marketing department, there is a lack of an overview of all content produced and distributed by PR, corp comms, HR for talent and recruitment, and customer care. When why what where does your audience stumbles upon your message, online and offline?

Content is undeserved one of the most silo'ed elements of a brand. Good news, it is easy to fix once you know the trick. 

Content eco-system

A visual overview helps to align all your touchpoints with a consistent and integrated message. Be detailed for the distribution; divide the touchpoints into audiences and topics. 

• In the center is your 'content house': your owned channels: www's, apps, organic SEO. The central place where you (should) publish all your content. From branded stories to commercial activations and campaigns.
• Surrounded by an overview of the channels to get eyeballs and to drive traffic. From social to search, to performance, to CRM, to the e-shop, and to your offline touchpoints as TVC, DOOH, brick and mortar shops with POS and product packaging.

Benefits

There are three main benefits of having a content eco-system in place. 

First, you have an overview of all online and offline touchpoints for content. To have an integrated story or campaign, you now can verify what content assets you need for which channel and where to push it with media spend. Small side note for those perfectionists out there, no need to include all touchpoints in every piece of content or campaign. The purpose of an overview is for you to know what you have available, then to decide what you are going to use. 

Second, in line with media spending, you have an overview of all paid and unpaid channels. If you push a social campaign, in one glance you know you have to spend the media budget on SEA as well. In reality, you seldom cross the bridge between marketing campaigns on social and SEA or even CRM. This visual overview helps. 

Last but not the least, crisis communications. You never know when the sh*t hits the fan, expect the unexpected and be prepared. No need to explain it is indispensable to have one overview. A checklist with all touchpoints and channels, including audiences and topics, paid and unpaid. 

Message over execution

The content eco-system is not about using social to always drive the traffic to the website or app. It is about your story and message. How this is executed into content assets depends on the chosen touchpoints and channels. On social, you go for native social content and shop-in-channel. For SEA it is about driving traffic.

Mobile-first

If you publish mainly on social, then place the app or mobile pages in the center -- not the www desktop. Meaning, if your traffic originates from social, they are on their mobile, visiting your mobile pages or app. Hence, mobile visitors are a larger number than desktop visitors. Therefore, place the mobile-optimized content in the center and make this more important than the desktop content. 

It seems a small difference, yet the difference in mindset is huge. Social savvy content on a mobile website means sticking to the social drumbeat. Short reads, easy to scan and digest, fast-paced and pleasant on the eye with clear formatting and bold writing. Short. Simple. To the point. No fuzz.

Read more on mobile and social first

Employees

'Employees' can be a channel to include in the content eco-system. Your coworkers can act as an amazing channel to spread the passion and enthusiasm for the brand and products. The initial reason I didn't include them is to empower, motivate, and inspire them to spread your content, is more aligned with internal communications. And I am not an expert in this area. 

On the other hand, if your content is of high quality and adds value, your coworkers will spread the word by themselves. Then there is no need for a reward system -- by internal comms -- to make them do it.

Hence, including your employees in the content eco-system has all to do with the quality of your content and not the department or silo within the organization. Thanks to Paul for nudging me on this topic. 

How to make a content eco-system

A few tips and tricks on how to create your own content eco-system for the visual overview. 

• Own it. Make one person responsible for the content eco-system and to keep it up to date. 
• It is tailored. There is no such thing as a content eco-system template. Every brand, company, and its channels are different. 
• Include all departments of the organization, interview all stakeholders. An easy trick is to get the organigram of the company and you work through every silo. 
• Sketch, iterate, adjust, and test. It is a living document and subject to changes. 

  A tangible and practical example of how I use the content eco-system for publishing my book.

Note

The content eco-system presented in this blog is completely fictional and not related to any of my clients. 

No need to explain an SEO strategy drives organic growth, is a ‘cheap’ way to drive traffic, and therefore is an indispensable part of your content strategy. Yet, once you know what content to produce, you have your themes, and you decided to go short-form or long-form, how to crack the code, and get a high ranking?

Simple, check out your competitors. This is so obvious and simple, yet actually never done by anybody. It’s a bonus and you take your advantage.

How to do the copy analysis 

It sounds complicated, actually, it is pretty easy once you know the trick. The keyword competitor SEO analysis for one keyword should take you about one hour. Start with your main themes, about 4 to 8. And you can always expand this SEO competitor analysis to all other keywords you want to be found on.

• Pick the keyword you want to rank on, in line with the core of your content piece and themes.
• Tip: open an incognito browser window to prevent your former search to influence the results.
• Go to Google and type in the keyword. Look at the organic top 5 or 10 first page results. Pick the credible sources. Reference: only select the links you would click on yourself and discharge the dodgy ones.
• Copy-paste the H1 and H2 headers from those pages and put them in excel. If there are a lot of H3, include these as well.
• Include the url in the excel. Learning by doing, I forgot this in the 'content' example.
• Make an analysis, break the H1 and H2 copy down in common topics and similarities.
• Tip: look at the style of writing. Depending on your industry, this writing can be very functional and not fancy marketing-driven at all. You should always write a ‘what’s in it for me’ copy, based on the needs of your audience. People google to find an answer to their question and to fulfill their needs, not to pro-actively read your beautifully written marketing sales pitch.

Go pro for copy

Now you know the difference between your competitors and your own copy. Three more tips.

First, get the copy pro on board for writing the content. It is an art, it is craftsmanship. The copy will make or break your content and your SEO ranking.

Second, involve your technical agency for the nerdy stuff in the backend to optimize for SEO. A part of the ranking is a threesome between the message, the copy and visuals, and the coding.

Last, not least. Obviously, there is much more to ranking on SEO than mentioned in this short blog. Think about URL structure, the naming of visuals, alt text, and meta tags.

Deep-dive in the nerdy details, do your homework, and optimize continuously. SEO is not a one-off, nor limited to copy. 

Google and Bing

Usually, in the EU, we focus on Google. Yet, don’t rule out Bing as a search engine. It is on the rise due to voice search, Bing is the go-to source for Alexa and Cortana if they cannot find the answer immediately. Great insights on voice search by The Drum.

Sources

A bit from myself and a bit stolen with pride from Content Marketing Institute https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/11/rank-blog-top-google/. And others https://blog.parse.ly/post/1511/the-ultimate-referral-guide-to-your-audience/, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/search/google-website-seo/.

And some more background on SEO and the options to improve your ranking https://expresstext.net/blog/search-engine-optimization/

Don't be ancient. Do your homework before you start producing content. Three easy steps:

1. Research: Google data and other data
2. Plot the outcome on your themes
3. Competitor SEO analysis

* Warning: this is a long read *

Research: Google and YT data

A simple, cheap, and excellent check to gain insights into what your audience actually wants. In a nutshell: discover the Google and YouTube search queries related to your industry, brand and products. I promise you, you will be surprised by the outcome.

Having done this research for several clients, time overtime again, the top 3 searches revealed content needs the brand never imagined.

They all have in common that the searches relate to the ‘help’ content, the bare basics of your products. None of them had this specific content in place. The good news is, neither had their competitors…. From the different roasting processes of coffee beans, the how-to booze recipes plus hacks, to the specific details on the local road-taxes and warranty related to electric cars.

More on reverse search and the four main benefits

1. Reveal the top 3 of their concerns: what is your audience searching
2. Discover the unknown topics: you think in features, they look for solutions
3. Use the search intent to give them your solution
4. Know the volume to prevent producing unread content

Use reverse search to create relevant content

This Google and YouTube research will cost you roughly between € 7k for local and € 15k for global. With the condition, you have a crystal-clear and tight briefing for your agency. This can be your media agency or your creative agency. You can also hire a specialized data agency. Keep in mind it takes more time to brief a new agency as they do not know your brand and are not familiar with the organization.

Speaking from experience, my advice: use your creative agency. As the media agency is more inclined to develop an SEO and SEA strategy. That is exactly not what you are looking for. You want to gain insights into the audience's needs to use in your (creative) content strategy.

How to brief your agency

As this type of research is quite new for agencies, a few suggestions for what to include in the brief. Drill down the desired output and make sure they get your objectives and what you are looking for. Your executive brief should fit on 1 A4 in simplicity. If you need a death-by-powerpoint-deck, you have to learn to brief. The better your brief, the better the outcome.

• Objective: insights for content strategy
• Themes: list of topics you want to be found on
• Keywords: industry, brand, and product
• Competitors names: stick to main competitors
• Countries or region: stick to the most important
• Language(s)

Don’t include the details of your audience or personas. Keep it open to discover.

Ask the agency to do broad research. The goal is to find out if there are more keywords or specific combinations used. Can these be grouped, is there a common theme, is there a trend? What are the top 10 searches for your industry, brand, and your competitors?

Research: Google Analytics

Do a scan of your website and deep dive into the GA. What are the most and least visited pages? Include the origin of the traffic in this overview, the internal and external sources. This gives insights into how your www is actually used and what generates traffic.

This research often reveals a dis-balance between your content production and the actual audience behavior. If the majority of your content is on product features and the top 3 pages are ‘sustainability’, ‘marketing campaigns’, and ‘contact’ — then you have some amazing opportunities to stand out and to be distinctive. And you have some work to do.

Research: Google content needs

Research by Google and Kantar (2018) reveals the needs of the audience for the content. In a nutshell, there are six categories: ‘surprise me’, ‘thrill me’, ‘impress me’, ‘educate me’, ‘reassure me’ and ‘help me’. Note these are consumer-focused and not product or feature focused.

Plot your existing content and planned content against these categories. Do they line up or are you way off track and too much inside-out focused? Again, to create an impact with your content, your audience's needs are central. That defines what they actually want to read. It is not about you as the brand and about your products.

As Vogue wanted to increase their online readers base and their reach, they flipped their perspective. Research amongst their readers revealed their content needs. No surprise these align with the Google categories.

With some local differences in the order of importance:

1. Inspire me: the minority of actual content — most wanted
2. Teach me
3. Entertain me
4. Keep me up to date: 38% of actual content — least read content by the audience
5. Make me socially responsible: 2% of actual content — 53% of the audience wants this
6. Connect me

Easy to change category

There is no direct need to produce new content once you know the preferred categories. It is easy to adapt the ‘keep me up to date’ to ‘inspire me’ content. First, write a more inspiring title, and second, showcase different perspectives and points of view in the text itself.

Please view the talk by Sarah Marshall, head of audience growth by ‘Vogue International’ to get all the insights and details.

Research: Customer care and webcare

This department has the first line of (social media) contact with your audience. They know as nobody else what triggers them, their questions, and frustrations. Use them as a source to define what content is needed.

A few years ago, I was responsible for the setup of the new in-house webcare department for an insurance company. As sitting next to the boys and girls, I was reading and listening in on their conversations. Noticing the majority of the cases were questions by pregnant women on the insurance coverage.

Presuming our clients preferred to be independent and actually not wanting to chat with us, and presuming we do have these insurance conditions and fine print online… we concluded that our www-information was too hidden and scattered on several pages. And when the content was found, it was not clear enough. Hence, we did the content audit and rewrote the existing content. Furthermore, we created a merged overview-page with all pregnancy-related information. Provided with a short url and a targeted social campaign, we decreased the workload on the webcare team by significant numbers.

Plot the outcome on your themes

Pretty much an open door, you should use these insights to (re)define your themes to structure your content.

Imagine, you are a coffee company and the research shows your audience wants to know the difference between arabica and robusta, light roast, and dark roast. This could be your first theme to explain the basics of coffee beans. 

The same goes for when your audience is looking for how-to and recipes for a cappuccino. And they want to know the difference between an iced coffee and a cold brew, or a ristretto and espresso... here you have your second theme.

Read more on 'How to structure content'

Competitor SEO analysis

Once you know what content to produce, check out your competitors, and how they rank on SEO. 

Sneak preview how-to:

• Open an anonymous window in Google,
• type in the keyword and
• make a list of the first 10 content items.
• Check these pages on their H1, H2, and url,
• use these insights to produce your own content accordingly.

Me-marketing

If you want to hit the ground running with content strategy or do data research, don't hesitate to nudge me for help. With over 20 years of experience and helping great inspiring international clients, happy to share my knowledge and experiences. 

• 📱+31 6 245 03 999
• 💌fleurwillemijnvanbeinum@gmail.com
• or check my LinkedIn

Source and credits

All on the Google research with the six audience's needs and the Vogue example is stolen with pride from Cor Hospes in 'De zes contentbehoeften van jouw publiek' hope it Google translates. Next to the Vogue example, Cor also explains how BBC World Services nailed it and an interesting SXSW talk by BuzzFeed. Great read and he is worth a follow.

What you will learn

1. Tree diagram for an overview
2. Themes for content structure and using tags
3. Finding the gaps: content as proof
4. Easier content planning

1. Create a tree diagram

No real need to explain why cohesion within your story and content is important, do I? Quite a few struggle to get grip on their content and bring structure in their story. Creating this construction is the more difficult part. It provides a logical flow from one topic to another and aligns all topics with the brands' mission statement, vision, purpose, or claim. Once you know the trick, easy does it.

My personal favorite is a pretty old school. Yet it works like magic, every time again. Maybe the simplicity is the golden nugget to get the overview. Divide what you want to tell into themes, in line with your claim.

As a diagram speaks louder than words, visualize the structure. Three ‘rules’ for the tree diagram:

Topics on the higher level are more general than the sub-topics on the lower level. Meaning the ‘lower’ you get in the tree diagram, the more detailed the (sub)topic per content item. Rule of thumb: stick to one (sub)topic per content item. If you have several, create several content items within the topic.

Topics per diagram-level should match up on the same level. For example, you can have the topic ‘alcoholic beverages’ with the sub-topics ‘beer’, ‘wine’, ‘spirit’. The content item-specific on ‘Gin’ ranks within ‘spirit’ and cannot be ranked within ‘alcoholic beverages’.

Rank on themes. The highest level is the brand ‘claim’, directly divided into general themes, which are split up in detailed stories that provide the proof of the claim.

2. Themes

This is pretty easy once you look beyond sales and think of your 'why'. The first step is to check your ‘why you do what you do’; who you are and why you are different than your competitors. This usually is anchored in your purpose, mission, and vision. Simply highlight the keywords. See the automotive example below. 

These keywords are your main themes. If needed, you can add one or two more themes. The secret of success is to keep it simple and stick to your core, your 'why'. Rule of thumb is to have a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 8 themes to keep the focus. Double-check if your themes correspond with your leadership claim. If these do not merge seamlessly, you have a brand identity problem.

The setup of your themes is absolutely a bespoke exercise and there is not a default model. How to divide and balance your content between them, depends on your brand, your strategy, and objectives.

Use Google data to define

With smarter usage of Google, you can produce content your audience actually wants to read. Pretty much an open door, you should use these insights to (re)define your themes to structure your content.

Imagine, you are a coffee company and the research shows your audience wants to know the difference between arabica and robusta, light roast, and dark roast. This could be your first theme to explain the basics of coffee beans.

The same goes for when your audience is looking for how-to and recipes for a cappuccino. And they want to know the difference between an iced coffee and a cold brew, or a ristretto and espresso... here you have your second theme.

Read more on 'Data for content'

Naming the themes

The naming of themes is also a bespoke exercise with the biggest pitfall to think inside-out. The naming of the themes is audience focused. Think about what words your audience is actually looking for and those to name your theme. Sounds pretty obvious, in practice, this is often overseen and forgotten. Resulting in theme names full of inside-out BS marketing jargon.

E.g. the theme is ‘electrification’, the actual name of this theme should be ‘electric driving’ or even ‘EV’.

Rule of thumb: keep it short and simple, do not try to impress.

Hack: use the keywords your audience most likely will use in Google.

Themes and #

Topics, themes, or tags. Three different words, with more or less the same meaning. Once you get into the actual content production, I prefer ‘tag’. Effectiveness of using # is already proven on social and adapted on the websites for search and discovery. A great example is the tagging used by news.airbnb.com to unlock the content and set up the pages and landing pages. The same trick applies to thinklikeapublisher.com.

Integrate

If you actually want to be Google-found on your themes, integrate these as the backbone for the navigation of your website. If ‘electric driving’ is part of your leadership claim, then ‘electric driving’ is in your main website navigation. Sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. In reality, most brands forget this important detail.

3. Content as proof and finding the gap

Your content supporting the theme is the actual proof of your claim. In other words, if you do not have enough in-depth content within your theme ‘sustainability’, you are not credible. And you are perceived as a fake. This lines up with your proactive defense reputation content.

Plot the existing content on your themes to discover the gaps in your communication. Know what content is still needed to endorse your leadership. Next to that, you can also discover an overload of content on a specific theme.

If your content publication is off-balance over the themes, ask yourself if you selected the right themes or if you are lacking in content production.

4. Easier content planning

Once you have the birds-eye overview on the proof in your content, it gets easier to plan. Four advantages: long-form or short-form, prevent duplicates, facilitate ideation, and nay-saying.

Long-form content needs

You know which of your themes are in need and suitable for more explanation and background information. By creating in-depth long-form content you can claim your thought leadership and share your knowledge on this topic. By developing the long-form content you differentiate from your competitors and you can stand out. With a very nice side effect, you rank higher in SEO.

Read more on 'Long-form content on the rise'

No duplicates

By having the visual overview, you can spot if you already have (sufficient) content on the specific topic. Then decide to update or expand the existing content or replace it with something new.

Content ideation

Another advantage is that you can use the tree diagram to plot new ideas for content items. As soon as you think of a new content item, plot it within a theme. In this way, you can create a hands-on tangible ideation list of content items for future usage.

Nay-Saying

Last but not least, having the themes helps you to say ‘no’ to content that is off-topic. Often there is some internal desire to produce ego polishing content that cannot be plotted within one of the themes. Having this theme-based content structure makes it easier to focus and politely decline any non-strategy based content requests.

Source and notes

With thanks to the book 'Schrijven met Effect' by Mariet Hermans, unfortunately only available in Dutch. Small note, the first few chapters are interesting for the 'how-to develop the tree diagram'. The rest of the book is more for students learning how to write a thesis. 

The diagram of the automotive example is completely fictional and not related to any of my clients. 

A trend in the making and now accelerated by Covid-19. The need for long-form content is growing by the week. 

Maybe it is me, I notice that the majority of the current brand content says about exactly next to nothing. A brand socially tickles me by making a claim or a statement in about 200 to maximum 300 words, or in 2mins video for the lazy readers. Clicking through to the actual content item, an explanation, the rationale, or other information is missing. 

This isn’t exclusive to brands, to (news)publishers as well. In the hunt for the readers and to be the first, the news becomes entertainment with the objective to sell advertising pixels or seconds. In addition, the fast-paced superficial social channels used to generate traffic, made the short even shorter.

Outline of this blog

What are the underlying causes and how to get your long-form content production in place?

• Definitions of long and short-form content
• 3 Reasons for the growing popularity of long-form content
• Tips for how to create long-form content

Definition long-form

First of all, what is long-form content? In Wikipedia terminology 'journalism’: 'Long-form journalism is a branch of journalism dedicated to longer articles with larger amounts of content. Typically this will be between 1,000 and 20,000 words. Long-form articles often take the form of creative nonfiction or narrative journalism.'

Next to the above, the long-form content explains, clarifies, and gives background information on the topic. It puts things in perspective and in a setting to really understand ‘what’ and ‘why’ is happening.

Social illusion

It is a fairy tale that long-form content is not suitable for online or even social media. You will do fine if your content is written to be read on a (mobile) screen and has a clear structure. Your audience will read or watch it as long as it captures his interest and adds value. It is all about quality first and the easiness to consume the content second. The growing popularity of Medium says it all.

Don’t be fooled, it is an illusion that there is a golden rule for the length of any content to be successful on digital, in writing, or in video.

Definition short-form

Short, shorter, shortest was the trend. Catching the attention in 1.5 seconds on the mobile, in 2.5 seconds at the desktop. We are in a rat race to produce the shortest content possible. With YouTube bumper ads as short as 6 seconds.

You will be surprised how much of a story you can tell in those split seconds. No doubt you can broadcast your message and share relevant information. Speedreading, fast-paced cycling images, or animations are the way to shorten the ad.

Size matters

Yet, as for other topics as well, size does matter. And we don’t always need to be fast and short. Think about the popularity of the 1+hour podcasts. Or some amazing extended YouTube documentaries. Let alone the popularity of IGTV. And don’t forget about the extensive background articles to explain innovation, features or specs. Or the several Golden Lions for up to 90 minutes documentaries (read more below). They all got a long-form content format in common.

As short as possible, as long as needed

As mentioned, your audience is looking for relevance and quality. Just stick to the simple rule ‘As short as possible, as long as needed.’ Two tips:

1. Choose: create short or long-form. Don’t get stuck in the middle to try to write a long read with a short read mentality. That for sure results in using fluff to fill the space.
2. Be distinctive: do not try to squeeze 'all' in the shortest format. This results in producing ‘more of the same’ and you fail to tell your audience something new and to be distinctive. By being too short, you repeat the open doors and you will not stand out.

How to combine short and long-form content

A simple trick for social content advertising is to produce several length assets and let the algorithm select the best ad for the best audience. All based on your KPI and objectives. Mixing assets is proven more effective than serving one or two lengths. (Source: Facebook Research 2019)

3 Reasons for the rise of long-form content

Roughly the reasons for the increasing popularity can be divided into three elements.

First: SVOD domination

The increase of the Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) dominated world makes it harder for brands to reach customers and create awareness via ‘traditional’ TVC advertising.

‘Much has been stated about the challenge for brands today that want to reach consumers when more of their audience are spending their time (and attention) within SVOD closed content eco-systems like Disney+, with limited traditional advertising or media placement opportunities.’ ‘This means it is time for brands to understand the need to, and effectiveness of, investing in longer-form storytelling to reach their audiences effectively.’

‘Resulting in Golden Lions Corazon (Give Your Heart) 48-minutes content for registration of organ donors. And for ‘5B' a 90-minute documentary by Johnson & Johnson to uncover the story of nurses on the front lines of the AIDS crisis.’ ‘Gaining consumers’ attention in the future isn’t just about understanding pathways to purchase and how to target audiences efficiently, but developing our ability as advertisers to create branded entertainment with a small b and big E.’

Source and edited quote from a Thinking Long Form – Lessons from The Lions by Cannes Lions.

Second: Covid-19

By the #stayinghome and #WFH (Working From Home), including the closure of the schools, cancelation of events, we are currently more used to educate ourselves and our children via online. Long-form content is indispensable for this. The Covid-19 is an accelerator for online learning and studying.

As I am no fortune teller, I cannot predict the future. Yet, I do expect this ‘new’ long-form educational behavior is here to stay since we are accustomed to it by the last few bizarre months at and in-home. A study by Kantar shows there is an increase in the need for long-form video in China during the lockdown. Source: Born Social webinar.

Third: fake news and proof

Also accelerated by Covid-19, the fake news. This was already a hot topic, now even more important than ever.

If we learned one thing from the last weeks, it is not to believe anything we read on social and to do news and background check if we have any doubts. Meaning, we are more prone to go to Google and search for the source and the credits. This is a big opportunity (for brands) to have your long-form content explaining your ‘why’ and delivering your ‘proof’ in the long-form content.

For example: if you are a jeans manufacturer and you claim to be sustainable, you better have your long reads in place that are the proof of your claim on sustainable fabrics and the ecological footprint for your suppliers. If it isn't for your audience, do it for the press who are digging for dirt in slack and the offseason. 

How to create long-form content

To wrap up and give you some tangible advice, a few tips on how to create long-form content.

1. Choose. Go short or go long. Don't get stuck in the middle. Become distinctive. 
2. No fluff. As short as possible as long as needed. Don't abuse words to fill the pages. 
3. From expensive high-end production to fast produced authentic. There is no need to be overly polished and have professional content. It is about the message and actual content, not the form. 
4. Stick to one topic, or create a series. Simply said, more difficult to do. Try to stick your content item to one topic. If you have more, create a series and seduce your audience to read more.
5. Be social first. Meaning to adapt your content and form to a different drumbeat.
6. Add value for your reader, not for you. This is mentioned as last in the list, maybe it should be the first. If there is no value for your audience, they will not consume your content, however long or short it is.

What stories to tell in your long-form content? That's a different topic. Read more on 'How to structure content' with insights, tips, and tricks to create a diagram for an overview, to find the gaps, and to define where to produce long-form content.