Diary of a Content Pimp 1 – The kick-off

Diary of a Content Pimp is a new series of blog posts – starting today – that tells the story behind our B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist campaign.

We did a similar thing in Project Open Robe, the ‘living case story’ of our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign and it was so rewarding we knew we had to chronicle our experiences with the Checklist campaign, too.

Why we want to do this

• To capture and share what we learn – Despite doing content marketing for years, we’re still on the same steep learning curve that the entire B2B world is on. And we find that if we don’t actively capture stuff we’ve learned… we forget we learned it.

• To foster a spirit of experimentation – If we know we have to report our experiences with you, we’ll need to make them interesting experiences.

• To give an honest picture of a real campaign – Most case stories are bathed in rosy light, as if nothing ever went wrong. We all know that’s bullshit but very few companies want the world to see them groping around in the dark. We don’t mind – and the result may be a real case story for fellow B2B marketers.

• For fun – Content marketing in the digital era is a blast. You get to try new things, test your hunches and see the results almost instantly. When things work, it’s a shot of adrenaline. When they flop, you get to analyse why. And blame Neil.

Why you should want to follow this

• To avoid the mistakes we make – and have a good laugh at our expense
• And seize the opportunities we discover – if you haven’t already discovered them
  
• And contribute your thoughts, hunches and ideas – because, hey, we’re all in this together

That last bit is kind of important. We’d love you to join us on this one — to suggest ideas for tests, or share your analysis or challenge ours.

So use the comments section of any Diary of a Content Pimp post to add your thoughts or ideas.

How would you promote the Checklist if it were yours?

What do you think we’re doing wrong?

What would you like to test or know more about?

In the next post, we’ll share our goals (in some detail) and our fears (this thing could flop and if so, it will be a very public flop).

Why we gave the Checklist that funny name

It was originally called The Big Fat Content Marketing Checklist and we really liked that name.  But one thing we noticed about the B2B Marketing Manifesto was that, since it has an SEO keyphrase in its title (B2B Marketing), every backlink has Google juice.  That seemed like such a good idea that we decided to sacrifice a bit of the fun of the Big Fat title and get the phrase ‘Content Marketing Strategy’ in the title.

We may end up regretting this. Neil makes a strong argument for evocative, interesting, human-friendly names in a recent blog post.  But in this case, we decided the B2B SEO value was pretty strong. Especially because we really believe that we’re entering the era of Content Strategy right now.  When we published the Content Marketing Workbook back in 2008, we were trying to evangelise the whole principle of content marketing so marketers would give it a try.

Most marketers are past that now. They’ve done a few pieces of content and they’ve worked a treat. Now they need to prioritise their content marketing efforts, focus their budgets and target specific goals, audience and buying stages.  So we believe there will be a hell of a lot more searching for ‘Content Marketing Strategy’ in the coming year and we want to hoover up that traffic, filter out the blue-chip tech clients with money seeping from every pore and spit back the deadbeats (I mean ‘nurture the rest’).

So that’s how we ended up with an 11-syllable mouthful like The Content Marketing Strategy Checklist with its slightly more fun sub-title: A Big, Fat, Roll-Up-Your-Sleeves Guide for B2B Marketers.

So here’s the first question in Diary of a Content Pimp

Were we right to chase the SEO keyphrase or should we have stuck to the original title?

Your thoughts below would be to us as the first drops of rain after a long drought are to a guy crawling across the dessert on his knees, wearing a torn loin-cloth-like-thing in a New Yorker cartoon.

Other Diary of a Content Pimp posts:

2) Goals, metrics and fears – what we think we’ll achieve; why we fear we won’t

3) The Promo Plan – how we’ll promote the Checklist

4) Forms or No Forms – that is the question

5) The Power of a Blog Series – why multiples are better than singles