When I sat down to build the content marketing plan for Right Source Marketing, I initially had a case of “planner’s block.” I’ve helped a number of clients with this type of planning, and yet I could not figure out exactly where to start. How is it possible that I didn’t have some type of template or process that would push me through this barrier?

The answer was simple. I wasn’t asking myself the right questions, and I wasn’t asking them in the same determined manner that I use with clients. I was letting myself off the hook.

After a good deal of back-and-forth (mostly in my own head), I came up with the following questions, which may serve as a blueprint for building a content marketing plan for your organization.

1.       Why are we doing this?

You heard right. Even someone who makes part of his living on content marketing had to ask that very important question to himself.

I came up with a variety of answers, but none more pragmatic than this one. I’ve seen first-hand what an organized content marketing effort can do for a business, and it’s powerful when done right.

2.       What’s the goal?

There are a variety of ways to answer this question. Some answers will focus on hard metrics like brand awareness, lead generation, or actual transactions. Some answers will focus on softer metrics like prospect engagement or page views. There is no right or wrong answer.

No matter what, though, answer this question early in the process.

3.       What is our unique story?

Even if you think your business falls into the cookie-cutter category, it has a unique story. If you don’t know what that story is, then you may want to go through an extensive process that focuses on company messaging.

If you do know what that unique story is, it ought to inform content marketing themes and be woven into each piece of content.

4.       Who is our audience?

More than likely, you have multiple audiences: prospective clients, current clients, prospective employees, current employees, investors, partners and more.

Then consider the audiences within each of those groups. For instance, you likely have more than one type of audience within the prospective client group. There are likely people that hold different positions, that are interested in different services, and that are engaged in different stages of a sales cycle.

My advice: It seems complicated, but don’t let that stop you. Sometimes you have to build a content marketing plan for your most “common” audience, and then you can take that, tweak it, and apply it to the other audiences.

For more on creating buyer personas, check out Jeremy Victor’s post, Buyer Personas: Where (and How!) to Start.

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Around this time every year, I am engaged in at least a half a dozen conversations with companies that are looking for a marketing firm to help them reach their goals for the upcoming year. Some know exactly what they’re looking for, and are fully prepared for the selection process. Some don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, but think they’ll know it when they see it. And sadly, some just enter this process with trepidation, because they’ve been burned in the past.

Fear – and in particular the fear of making a mistake –  is a very strong force. For a select few, it can be a trigger for adrenaline and aggressive decision-making. For many others, it can cause inaction, paralysis and conservative decision-making.

For companies that have been burned in their selection of strategic marketing firms in the past, let me offer a few pieces of advice on making a better decision this time around.

1. Know the Difference Between Marketing Strategy and Marketing Services

Marketing strategy should inform and guide marketing planning, which in turn informs and guides marketing services and tactics. Building a new website or distributing one press release each month is not a marketing strategy.

If you have your marketing plan all buttoned up for 2012, you may be ready to hire a marketing services firm to handle one or more of the tactics you identified in that plan. If not, you need to find a firm that can think strategically as well.

Good marketing strategists can not only help you with things like customer, competitor and target market analysis, but they can help you evaluate past marketing performance and use that information to guide 2012 marketing objectives.

2. Get Educated, Set Parameters and THEN Compare Apples to Apples

I see a lot of marketing proposals, and it makes me feel terrible for the people that have to translate, evaluate and compare proposals from different companies.  Even when you cut through the buzzwords and verbosity of the average proposal, you’re often left with dramatically different approaches and price ranges.

Here’s how I solve that riddle when on the buying side:

• Explain the situation and objectives – as you see them – to the firms you’d like to speak with.

• Ask them to come back with a general approach for how they would handle the situation. (This is where you’ll see good firms separate from weak firms.  A good firm ought to be able to explain their approach and how and why it might be different from others.)

• Get educated on the different approaches, and decide which general direction you like best.

• Make that your new approach, and ask for proposals addressing that new approach.

Now you ought to be able to compare apples to apples. You just used this process to educate yourself, get information from some (hopefully) smart marketing firms, and make your decision-making process more efficient.

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Welcome Allison Novak:  Right Source Marketing’s New Marketing Associate

Over the past month, the Right Source Marketing team put together our strategic plan for 2012. While we pride ourselves in helping clients with strategy and planning, it was quite an eye-opener to go through this process for our own company.

One of the most important components of this plan is a set of core values that we adhere to, or what we refer to as the guardrails that keep us on track even in moments of chaos or confusion. Those guardrails also guide decisions on the people we want to work with, including full-time staff members, part-time staff members, contractors and partners.

It became very clear during this process that Allison Novak is someone that fits into those core values, because she is talented, likable, hard-working and detail-oriented, all while maintaining a healthy sense of humor. Although Allison has been working for Right Source Marketing for the past 10 months, please join us in welcoming her in her new full-time role as Marketing Associate.

Allison will continue to be heavily involved in our content marketing and social media services, and will take on new responsibility in areas such as client account management and reporting. And of course, as with every other Right Source staff member, she will be a regular contributor to the Marketing Trenches blog.

As always, a quick note on what we learned during this hiring process – patience is an extremely valuable quality, for both the job seeker and the hiring company. In this case, it took time for us to figure out the right fit for Allison at Right Source, and it took time for Allison to figure out if we were the type of company she wanted to work for. Consider this a victory for patience, and one that will reap rewards for both sides, hopefully for years to come.

If you’d like to connect with Allison, drop her an email, find her on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter.

While the 4 Ps of marketing are still relevant, it’s the 7 Ps that are most applicable to modern day marketing. Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This is especially true for social media planning, where all too often the plan revolves around a murky set of objectives and a band of interns.

When done right though, a social media plan for marketing, recruiting, or customer service is a thing of beauty. Having completed a handful of these plans on behalf of clients in the past few months, here are the 10 components that belong in your social media plan, regardless of organization type, size, and structure.

1. The Baseline Metrics

Even if no one is interacting with your Facebook fan page and only your employees are sharing your content on Twitter, it’s important to establish a baseline. Sometimes the sole reason for establishing a baseline—as bad the numbers may look—is to set up the applause when those numbers improve.

2. Competitor Benchmarks

Don’t do this to be a copycat. Do this for the same reason you gather the baseline metrics in number one above. It’s not always easy to identify what you’re after with your social media program, and competitors make an easy (and fun) target.

Whatever you do, don’t assume that because a competitor seems to have their act together that they actually do. Follower counts, engagement and a well-designed presence are often the result of pure longevity, and not the implementation of unique ideas.

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Authors work with publishers to gain access to cash, connections, and blueprints for distribution and marketing. Choose the right publisher, and the chances of commercial success are increased, although not guaranteed. Choose the wrong publisher, and even a brilliant novel or biography may never make the Amazon Best Seller list.

Publishers add tremendous value to the production, packaging and promotion of a book. For decades, publishers have taken original content, put a nice wrapper on it and distribution plan around it, and helped sell more books than an author could ever dream of selling on his or her own. In fact, publishers are our first real example of what we now call “content marketers.”

That’s why it surprised me that I didn’t hear discussion about the heavy details – or really any details – about effective content distribution planning at Content Marketing World. That is, until I stepped into sessions hosted by Todd Wheatland of Kelly Services and Jonathan Byerly of Dell.

It’s people like Todd and Jonathan – not the consultants – who we need to hear more stories from, and that’s coming straight from a consultant. In different ways, both laid out what a corporate content marketing program can and should look like, and in the process included some very concrete examples. Slides are just slides, but Jonathan in particular showed some slides that proved that content distribution at Dell is handled thoroughly and with consideration for whether the prospect is in the awareness, consideration, decision or action phase of the buying cycle. (Content Marketing World attendees can view the presentations here.)

Here’s the only problem. Dell is Dell. The average organization is simply not this far along with its content marketing strategy, and does not possess the resources Dell does.

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