We entered the world of public speaking this week, with our first Breakfast Club discussing how to start a content marketing strategy in Winchester’s intimate Hotel Du Vin.

Here’s a summary of what we covered, with links to content marketing resources and the slideshow we presented to a select group of Rooster clients this week.

What is Content Marketing?

  • Content marketing has been around since the 1920s when soap companies started using print media to educate their companies.
  • It helps if your content is able to respond to the context, time and environment that suits the consumer. They might consume it on a mobile, or defer it to ‘read later’ in an app, and your content should work in as many of these contexts as possible.
  • You’re competing for attention against the user’s friends, other content, and their daily lives. The only way to compete is to offer real value, or an emotional experience. Both are worth their time, and both are worth passing on to others.
  • Gain the trust of users by providing value, and they’ll be more receptive to your regular marketing messages and consider becoming a customer.

Content Marketing Tips

A study of 100 million articles revealed some useful tips on getting more shares for your content. Here’s the biggest content marketing takeaways:

  • Stories are easier to understand than pure facts. Try to tie your content to some kind of narrative, with a start and end point. Notice that we set the scene at the start of this post – this sets the context for readers who were not at the event.
  • If you want more shares, think about writing long authoritative content which is ‘evergreen’ and stays relevant for longer than news content. Use images to help set the scene, and find ways to inject emotion wherever possible.
  • Use images, graphics and lists to help communicate complex ideas. If your content is easy to understand, they will find it more useful and are more likely to share it. This is why info graphics and lists remain so popular.
  • Find influencers on social media using the tools listed below, and build a relationship with them. Influencers have a multiplying effect on the number of shares your content will receive.

Content Marketing Resources

We recommended a series of online tools to help you plan content, generate ideas and find influencers. Here’s a list of what’s on offer, and you can scroll down to see them in more detail.

  • Free Content Marketing Cycle template
  • Free Editorial Calendar template
  • Rooster’s Content Marketing Slideshow
  • External links and tools

Free Content Marketing Cycle template

How can your business start to build a content marketing strategy today? We’ve prepared a Content Marketing Cycle to help you get started.

The key takeaway: content marketing doesn’t start and end at a fixed point. It’s a recurring process where you draw new lessons and make genuine improvements every time, where all your previous success will keep stacking on top of itself.

Free Editorial Calendar template

Editorial calendars are a great way to prepare your content marketing strategy. They give you an overview of your content plans for the year, and help to spread the load over time and between your team.

We recommend using Trello to plan your content. It’s free, flexible, and great for collaboration between your team. You can sign up for free, and it’s easy to duplicate the template below.

See our free Editorial Calendar in Trello

Rooster’s Content Marketing Slideshow

Here’s the full slideshow used on the day of our Breakfast Club. Perfect for passing on to colleagues. Scroll up for a summary of the big takeaways from the day.

External Links and Tools

We recommended several external tools during our content marketing talk, particularly ones that help amplify your message on social media:

What do you want to see?

This content marketing seminar was our first Rooster Breakfast Club. We’d love feedback in the comments from attendees, and anyone else who finds this page. What will you take away and use? What do you want to learn more about? And what didn’t work? We’re all about testing and improving, as our marketing clients know, so let us know by any means you like.

If you want to attend a Rooster Breakfast Club at Winchester’s Hotel Du Vin, send us an email and we’ll notify you about a future event.