Schaefer - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business

SIX ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR IGNITING YOUR CONTENT, YOUR MARKETING, AND YOUR BUSINESS

MARK W. SCHAEFER

This book was produced in part through the generous patronage of Dell Inc. and gShift. Please support the sponsors who made the book possible.

Copyright 2015 by Mark W. Schaefer

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at . Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

- From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers.

Schaefer Marketing Solutions

www.businessesGROW.com

First Edition: March 2015

Publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Cover, Interior Layout and Design by Sarah Mason

www.uncommonlysocial.com

Ebook formatting by Polgarus Studio

www.polgarusstudio.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schaefer, Mark W.

The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business

Mark W. Schaefer - 1st ed.

ISBN-10: 069237233

For my Alpha Audience. We create content but content also creates us. This is for those who read, think, and grow with me each day.

The Tao of Twitter

Return on Influence

Born to Blog (with Stanford Smith)

Social Media Explained

Each time Ive written a book, Ive tried to solve a problem and answer an important and complex question on the mind of my customers, my students, and my friends in the business world. My previous books have provided answers to questions like

Can you help me figure out Twitter?

Social media is overwhelming where do I start?

How do I begin and sustain a blog that actually helps my organization?

How do I become significantperhaps even powerful and successfulon the web?

So far, so good. As long as I encounter big questions that require more than a blog post to answer, I suppose I will keep writing books. Heres the question at the heart of The Content Code:

Im a professional marketer working as hard as I can. Im producing content, engaging on social media, and spinning right along with the revolving door of every digital marketing innovation and new platform. Why is my business not getting anywhere?

Heres the short answer: Because youre living in yesterdays world.

The persistent myth that surrounds much of marketing today is that content is king. And if you can just produce enough of this scintillating, ripped-from-the-headlines, epic and amazing stuff dripping with keywords, stuffed to the headlines with relevance, decorated with Pinterest-worthy graphics and videos, and podcasts and listicles youll win.

Were stuck with a misconception that the most worthy content rises to the top, scorching the search rankings, and becoming a dazzling beacon for eager customers. And at one point, that was probably true. Early in the webs history, the balance between the content available online and our capacity to consume it was grossly out of balance. We were insatiable consumers, spending hours discovering the new information sources coming at us on the emerging World Wide Web.

But the balance has shifted. Dramatically.

Every company, agency, club, university, non-profit organization, and 13-year-old kid hoping to break out as the next Katy Perry is pumping out content. Nearly everyone with access to the Internet has joined the content creation party. Selfies. Videos. Love poems. Songs. Infographics. Grumpy Cat.

As you look at the future of this business landscape, there is no single trend that will have a more profound impact on how you market, where you market, and to whom you market than this overwhelming and uncontainable force of digital information density.

Of course, if youre currently working in marketing, PR, advertising, customer service, or sales, you already know that. The real question is, what do you do about it?

Answering that question has become my obsession. Are we just going to let this tsunami of content take us under? Do we play by Facebooks rules and hand over our money so we can reach our own hard-earned fans with our content? Do we just sit by and watch our great work become a de-valued commodity?

No. We need answers and ideas. We need alternatives. And thats why were here. This is a book about hope, about breaking through this menacing wall of noise, and winning at marketing nowbeyond content, beyond social media, beyond search engine optimization (if such a thing even exists any more). The Content Code starts where your current content marketing plan ends, for as youll find out, creating another blog post or video is probably the least of your worries.

Creating great content is not the finish line. Its the starting line.

The imperative for your organization today is to unlock your content, unleash it, ignite it, and somehow convert it to measurable business value within this shrill world of overwhelming information.

Ive spent the last year studying this essential concept of content ignition, and it has changed me. There is a science and psychology behind the act of sharing content that is awe-inspiring and beautiful and mesmerizing. People share content for hundreds of reasons, but there is a uniform process behind it inexorably linked to self-image, caring for others, and even compassion for an author or brand. Its an astonishingly intimate experience, a precious symbol of trust and communion with our content that I had never considered before.

Ive also discovered that there is indeed a launch code for digital marketing success, a complex cocktail far beyond mere promotion. Its a program that can nudge content to the top, help it become discovered, and unlock remarkable new economic value from the investment made in wonderful posts, pictures, podcasts, and other elements of marketing communications.

While most marketers have understandably had their heads down producing content and building their audience, its time to look up again and see that we need to build a third competency an ignition plan.

The new priority of content transmission is a combination of art, science, and maybe even a little mathematical magic that includes these six factors of The Content Code:

• Brand development
• Audience and Influencers
• Distribution, Advertising, Promotion, and SEO
• Authority
• Shareability embedded into each piece of content
• Social proof and social signals

The beauty of The Content Code is that its accessible to anyone and businesses of any size. Whether you have a little time for marketing each week, or you can dedicate full-time resources to content ignition (and this is beginning to occur), this book is filled with hundreds of ideas that will help you triumph in the chaotic information marketplace today.