How to Build a Self-Sustaining Content Marketing Engine

This article was originally published on Growth Everywhere.

More content than ever is being produced today as more businesses are understanding the need to operate as a media company.

And that’s fair. The results from content marketing cannot be denied:

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So the question is this: how do you create a self-sustaining content marketing engine? An engine that can operate efficiently with all the moving parts flowing as one?

I’ve gone through this exercise a few times (and failed in the process).

In this post, I’m going to give you a template to build your own content marketing engine. Every business is different, so take what makes the most sense and integrate it into your company.

1. The Team

If you’re going to create a content marketing engine, you’re going to need help. One person can’t do it all alone.

Here’s an example of how a team might be set up for a small company:

• Editor
• Designer
• Social Media Specialist/Individual Outreach
• Paid Advertising Specialist
• Writers

Let’s talk about these roles for a little bit:

Editor

The editor is responsible for making sure your content is up to par, gets scheduled, and follows your content process. In a sense, they can be seen as the executor of your content machine. For larger companies, you might have a Content Marketing Manager, Director of Content Strategy, VP of Content or Chief Content Officer.

Where to find good editors:

• Inbound.org and Growthhackers.com - These are communities where marketers go to post the latest marketing news. They also have job boards that you can post your jobs on.
• Problogger.net - Problogger has a job board where you can hire writers or editors. The quality of the talent here is higher because Problogger is seen as a strong resource for learning how to blog properly.
• Craigslist - Don’t scoff at Craigslist. Some of the best talent I’ve found has come from Craigslist. It’s all about having a strong hiring funnel to start.
• Referrals - Always a strong place to start if you’re in need of help.

Designer

The designer helps make the imagery of your content look nice. Keep in mind that how your images and graphics look reflects upon your brand and that content with great imagery gets more engagement

Where to find good designers:

• Behance and Dribbble - Both sites are directories that show off the portfolios of individual designers. I personally prefer Dribbble.
• Visual.ly - If you’re looking for infographic designers, Visual.ly is the spot to go to.
• Referrals - Always a strong place to start if you’re in need of help.

Social Media Specialist/Individual Outreach

The social media specialist will listen to and engage with your audience. They’re also responsible for curating content that your audience might be interested in. If you’re wondering what your self promotion to outside content ratio should be, I suggest going with 1:4. This means that for every self promotional share, you should have four curated shares.

Individual outreach involves reaching out to:

• People who were mentioned in a content piece
• People who have shared something similar and who might be interested in sharing your piece
• People you know

It’s tedious work finding the right contact information and then e-mailing people, following up, and repeating this over and over. In an ideal world, this would be a role in itself. Probably somebody more junior.

If you are part of a smaller team, I suggest training this person in individual outreach and paid content promotion. Smaller team members need to wear lots of hats and these responsibilities fit this individual best.

Where to find great social media specialists:

• Facebook Group: Social Media Jobs - Believe it or not, this is a KILLER group on Facebook where social media specialists are looking for gigs all the time. I have found some incredible talent here.
• Inbound.org and Growthhackers.com - These are communities where marketers go to post the latest marketing news. They also have job boards that you can post your jobs on.
• Problogger.net - Problogger has a job board where you can hire writers or editors. The quality of the talent here is higher because Problogger is seen as a strong resource for learning how to blog properly.
• Craigslist - Don’t scoff at Craigslist. Some of the best talent I’ve found has come from Craigslist. It’s all about having a strong hiring funnel to start.
• Referrals - Always a strong place to start if you’re in need of help.

Paid Advertising Specialist

The paid advertising specialist will help promote content on paid channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Gmail, LinkedIn and more. Promoting content through paid advertising is a growing trend and I think it’s the way of the future.

For example, right now we are paying for cold traffic to come to our blog posts and we’re collecting e-mails for $2.88 per e-mail. That’s a GREAT deal for us.

Where to find great paid advertising specialists:

• LinkedIn - Look for specialists that are working at current agencies. They’re ALWAYS looking for extra side work.
• Inbound.org and Growthhackers.com - These are communities where marketers go to post the latest marketing news. They also have job boards that you can post your jobs on.
• Referrals - Always a strong place to start if you’re in need of help.

For a more in-depth look at how a content marketing team should be organized, take a look at this post by Content Marketing Institute.

Here’s what their ideal workflow looks like:

2. Ideation

Resources:

• Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing Ideation
• Creating Content That’s Actually Unique
• Team Skills Editorial Plan

Draw up a mind map of your workflow in MindMeister.

The next step is coming up with fresh ideas for your audience.

Here are a few good ways to get started:

Swipe Files

Swiped.co contains many marketing swipe files that you can use for inspiration. You can pull landing page/image inspiration for your own purposes.

I also regularly use Evernote to clip evergreen blog posts so that I can refer back to them.

Feedly is also a great place to keep an inventory of your favorite blogs. With Feedly, I can scroll through my feed really quickly and look for inspiration. Here’s an example:

One of my personal favorites is using Twitter lists to keep tabs on certain industries. For example, I made a list of venture capitalists that I like to follow and I always get value from checking up on it every day:

Team Brainstorming

Making good use of your team is one of the most powerful ways to come up with great ideas.

Moz has a great set of tips for running a great brainstorming session right here:

Look For What’s Working

Utilize tools like Google Trends and Google Display Planner to see what’s trending. Keyword Tool is another great way to see keyword volume not only on Google, but on YouTube as well.

I personally love using SEMrush to take a look at what competitors are doing in terms of PPC and SEO. BuzzSumo is great for looking at how content is performing socially.

Here’s an example use case for BuzzSumo:

Let’s say I’m interested in looking at top performing content for ’link building’. I’ll go to the ‘Content Research’ tab in BuzzSumo and enter “link building”:

Because we’re in the ideation phase right now, I’d like to:

1. Export all these results, and
2. Create an alert for this phrase so I can continually monitor it.

Just thinking off the top of my head, maybe I can create an alternate version of the first result. How about ‘How to Use Pinterest for SEO: Link Building’? Might be worth a shot.

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by Eric Siu via SitePoint