content marketing

How soon does blogging deliver results?

January 27, 2011 By Dan Thornton

One of the first questions that gets asked when blogging is mentioned as a topic is how quickly it will be successful. And the honest answer is impossible to give without several factors which are completely individual to every business. Do you already have a media presence? Can you devote time and resource to creating great content? And most importantly, what consititutes success? Are you looking to drive awareness, engagement, interaction, sales, ad revenue?

But at the same time, it’s handy to have something to benchmark against, and most online comparisons are flakey at best when compared to actual analytics. So I thought I’d share some recent figures for one of my personal projects, OnlineRaceDriver, as it recently celebrated a first anniversary.

To give some context, OnlineRaceDriver and its new sister site, FPSPrestige, are experiments in extremely niche targetted content, driven partly by a shared passion for videogames by everyone involved, and partly by my desire to be able to build a small media business which allows me to continually experiment and evolve all the digital content and marketing skills any business or client can benefit from. Both are done in the spare time available to me and the other contributors, and the only financial investment has been in paying for hosting and a custom blog design (Both use the now-replaced Metro theme from StudioPress) – they both use WordPress as a free CMS system and PHPBB3 as a free forum solution, with Google Analytics providing measurement above what is available straight away from WordPress.

So, after 12 months of spare time work, how has ORD done?

215 Posts (The biggest sign of the time constraints – ideally it should be a lot more!)
204 Comments (Just under one comment per post isn’t too bad..)
46,831 Page Views (Could have been more with a little more focus on high traffic posts and promotion)
30,705 Unique Visitors (Again, this is an area where we probably could have done a lot more with more time)
1,100+ Youtube Views (This is all from press release videos, and is a somewhat painful process a lot of the time!)
59 Facebook Fans (The biggest challenge here is that Facebook Notes is increasingly broken, requiring manual updates which sometimes get forgotten!)
Cited as a reference source on Wikipedia (One of the nicest recent developments has been that someone working on Wikipedia has started referencing some of our breaking news on the site)

In terms of monthly figures, in the first month of ORD we had:

334 Visits
713 Page Views
205 Unique Visitors

And 12 months later, and with 5 more days to go in January, we’ve had:

4,175 Visits (Up 1,150%)
5,352 Page Views (Up 650%)
3,678 Unique Visitors (Up 1,694%)

1000% growth for something in a very experimental and low-key first 12 months isn’t too bad. Good enough that FPSPrestige launched and has achieved slightly better figures in its first month.

There’s no real conclusion here – in terms of success, both sites are around where I expected and hoped in the first 12 months, and all the graphs are ‘up and to the right’, so I’m happy there’s a lot more to come, even as I roll out more features (The forums for both sites have just launched, for example).

But as a simple guide – if as a small business with no budget, you could do something which puts your brand in front of 4000+ relevant people every month in exchange for some time, that could really start to change things. If you leveraged all the connections you have, that could change things a bit more. Through in some relevant promotion, and that moves it on further…

I recently scared myself when I realised that across this site and the other 3 or 4 main sites I’m playing with in my spare time, one bloke at his kitchen table now reaches over 10,000 people and growing every month.And with constant attention and improvement that number will hopefully keep growing. Of course, 10, 20, or 500,000 visitors might make a ‘successful’ website, but it doesn’t make a successful business… That’s another piece of the puzzle…

Content marketing, user data and the dangers of free WordPress themes

January 14, 2011 By Dan Thornton

Bit of a link post from me today as I’ve been working on a number of things for clients, and also updating some other projects. So rather than adding to the list that I intend to blog about someday, here’s some important things to consider:

Arm yourself with content, for Goliath is coming: Interesting post which reiterates a lot of the things I’ve been saying about content and marketing over the last 6 months – now is the time to start doing it. More and more companies are realising how useful content and social media marketing can be, and how much ROI it can produce, so you’re going to see more and more content fighting for attention. And given that it takes time to build an attentive audience, you don’t want to wait around any longer!

Myspace on the auction block. What happens to user data?: Given that I’ve just been writing about social media content and user data from the perspective of future historians having access, it’s also important to consider what happens to that data if a site sells to another owner, rather than shutting down. How do you feel about your content, information and contacts being transferred? Another reason to adopt a hub and spoke model, with ownership of your own content/business/contact hub. And it’s so easy to do with the availability of self-publishing tools…

The hidden dangers of free WordPress themes: But although setting up WordPress, for example, is pretty easy, there are still dangers that you need to be aware of. For instance, only using themes from trusted sources, and checking them before you install them. Do you know what links are contained in the theme you downloaded from a random website? The original post shows the examples of how you can actually decode what could be hidden in a theme. There are a couple of solutions – one is to only pick themes from trusted sources, and the other is to bite the bullet and pay for themes from trusted sources. For instance, in my case, I tend to pay for themes from StudioPress, but there are some other good alternatives, such as Woo Themes (which I’ve used on some client sites, for example).

So why not spend the weekend getting started on your 2011 digital content and marketing. And feel free to pose any questions in the comments – if I can’t answer them, there’s a growing number of people reading this site who probably can!

Content Marketing continues to grow

December 3, 2010 By Dan Thornton

The use of content marketing and branded content publishing will continue to grow, particularly as new research suggests it is more effective than other forms of digital marketing.

Research by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), reveals 60% of regular web users surveyed trust brands’ content sites, 43% on portals and 39% on social networks. Just under a third (32%) feel more positive towards a brand on a content site, 17% on portals and 14% on social networks. The study also showed advertising around content to be more effective than on other types of website and social network.

Obviously an organisation whose members are publishers, broadcasters and online media agencies might like those figures – but it’s also important to remember that content sites don’t have to mean ‘just’ traditional publishers. Developing content for your business should encompass your own website or blog through to what is being written, or supplied to, other websites.

And marketing campaigns in the U.S are certainly supporting the use of content in marketing:

Traditional content creators obviously have an advantage here, and it’s an area bloggers have been utilising for the last ten years.

But how does your business start using content marketing?

There is a huge amount of potential in content marketing, and the best method for your business depends on your industry, company size, areas of expertise. The solution can range from training your existing staff to hiring external content experts from the journalism and blogging worlds, but in my opinion, the key element of content marketing is a focus on how it actually benefits your business. And that includes deciding the key metrics and analytics that make sense from day one, whether you’re looking to drive direct sales, leads, or brand awareness.

And if you’re stuck, obviously I’m always happy to help with a range of content creation and marketing services!

Over 1000 interesting predictions for 2009

December 22, 2008 By Dan Thornton

As the year draws to a close, the thoughts of almost every blogger turn to making their predictions for 2009, and whether they were proved right in 2008.

But, rather than indulging myself in making some educated guesses, here’s one really good list of predictions on social media and content marketing at Junta 42, including some best guesses from yours truly.

Here’s mine, in case you get distracted by the likes of Paul Bradshaw, David Meerman Scott, Giles Rhys Scott, Scott Monty, Neil Perkin, and many more people I’ll be following in the future – in fact the only downside is even more worth paying attention to in my RSS feeds!

Prediction: Social Media Marketing will become a more mainstream approach, with a better understanding of how ROI is driven both directly and indirectly – this means an influx of brilliant examples, but also of the worst examples of jumping on something without investing the time and resources to understand it properly first.

Technology wise, Twitter will be officially mainstream, and will have monetized in some way, so I’d expect a rush of companies using whatever appears as a short term, low effort way to get into the buzz around micro blogging.

I’d also say video will continue to become more and more utilized – both as a publicity tool, but also as an interaction tool using sites like Seesmic, 12 seconds and mobatalk as ways to actually engage with people and provide a way for conversations to form via video.

If you’d rather see facts and figures without risking RSS overload, then there’s some interesting research from Pew on The Future of the Internet, with around 1196 participants – there’s some good analysis all over the web, but the aforementioned Neil Perkin spotted something I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Oh, and another good round-up of predictions kicked off by Peter Kim which encompasses another 14 top minds sharing their thoughts.

There are lots of really insightful and educated analysis around 2009, with regards to technology, marketing and the economy – but having seen so many different sides to every argument, it seems like the best option is to go with your gut instinct for what you believe to be fundamentally true – and then be ready to adapt it as things unfold. In my case, that means constantly watching how to best allow the power of networks and human communication to be empowered and measured, whether that’s through digital or real world approaches.