YOUR CONTENT
MARKETING CHEAT SHEET
Tips, Best Practices, and Tools to Delight and Attract Clients and Customers
MARIA ROSS
Creator and Chief Brand Strategist, Red Slice, LLC
Create Your Content Marketing Strategy
Before going on any trip, you need a map to get you there. Don’t just dive into tactics without a
strategy. Your Brand Strategy is the root of everything your business does and informs it all, but
you also need a specific strategy for each function.
A content marketing strategy lives above any specific vehicles, topics or dates. It should drive
all of your efforts.
The strategy includes:
• What are our content marketing objectives?
• What does our audience want? What do they need to know?
• What will we create?
• Will we have monthly themes and seasonal topics?
• Which vehicles will we use?
• How will we monitor and measure success?
Content Ideas:
Content marketing comes in many forms: videos, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, emails, social
media posts, free guides, tip sheets and more.
You will decide which vehicles to create. But how do you determine what you should talk about?
• Survey your clients: What do they want or need?
• Answer common questions you get all the time.
• Comment on hot trends or current news and give your professional take.
• Share important advice that your audience needs to know.
• Interview other experts that may be of interest.
• Curate, don’t just create! You don’t have to create everything from scratch. You are also
a trusted curator. Share interesting articles, community events, links to great resources.
• Poke around on social media or do Google searches and see what questions people are
asking and for what they are searching.
• Build an editorial calendar to keep everything organized.
The Content Marketing Process
Great! You’ve built a content marketing strategy and everyone is on the same page. You know
what to expect. Now it’s time to get going.
1. Build Your Email List
• Most important asset: Warm leads
• Offer an opt-in incentive or simple “Find out the latest news, information and tips to
help you !”
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2. Choose Your Tactics
• Remember The Rule of Three: Pick up to three content vehicles or social media
networks and do them really, really WELL. That’s the only way to be effective and
avoid wasting time, effort and money.
3. Create An Editorial Calendar
• Schedule out when you will talk about which topics so you can be more efficient and
plan content ahead of time. To make things easy, pick monthly themes or seasonal
topics.
4. Create (and Curate) your Content
• Create: Original articles, videos, podcasts, social media posts. Give tips, checklists,
images, infographics.
• Curate: Link to trusted articles, resources, events, videos, interview guest experts,
solicit guest posts or client-contributed content, such as photos, essays, or
testimonials.
5. Share Your Content
• Send by postal mail (if applicable).
• Blast emails with a proper email marketing platform (such as Constant Contact,
Aweber, MailChimp, Emma). Never, ever send mass marketing emails from one
person’s work email. This will get you caught in Spam filters and blacklisted and also
compromises recipients’ privacy.
• Promote through your social media networks.
• Highlight on the website.
Best Practices and Tools to Make Content
Marketing Easier
Make Content Shareable
• Use Forward to a Friend, Social Share Buttons.
• Pre-write posts to share: ClicktoTweet.com.
• Use images and infographics.
Use Images
When people hear information, they Visual content is 40X more likely to
are likely to remember only 10% of get shared on social media than other
that information three days later. types of content.
However, if a relevant image is paired with that (Buffer, 2014)
same information, people retained 65% of the
information three days later.
(LifeLearn, 2015)
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Optimize Images for Each Social Network:
Every social network has different image size requirements so remember to resize for optimal
viewing. Bookmark this page: The always updated image sizing guide for every social network.
Free Image Resources:
• Unsplash
• 500px
• Flickr Creative Commons
**Be sure to add a photo credit, depending on rights agreement and terms.
Free Image Editing Tools:
• Canva: Get every template you need, pre-sized and with compelling imagery. They have
templates you can use or you can upload your own images.
• PicMonkey: Re-size images to any size you like and add eye-catching banners, effects,
titles, etc.
Batch And Pre-Schedule Content, But…
• Batch content creation by doing several videos or blog posts in one sitting
• Pre-schedule content delivery in advance so you can set it and forget it:
-- Blogs: WordPress enables scheduling posts in advance
-- Email Platform: All of them have the ability to schedule in advance
-- Social media: Popular scheduling tools include Hootsuite, Buffer, Meet Edgar, and
you can use Tailwind specifically for Pinterest and Instagram
-- One caveat: If pre-scheduling to a Facebook brand page, only use Facebook’s native
scheduler, not a third-party tool. Otherwise, the Facebook algorithm will not show the
post to as many of your fans.
…Set Aside Weekly Time For Live Engagement
• Social media is SOCIAL so make sure you are active within the platform
• Schedule 15 minutes per day to dip into social networks and interact, even if you pre-
schedule content.
• Follow proper etiquette for each network
• Respond to comments, give shout-outs, thank people, share valuable content from other
trusted sources, promote complementary businesses or organizations if applicable
Recycle and Reuse
• Spruce up old content for use again
• Repackage into other forms: A blog post becomes a media pitch; an article becomes a
podcast or video. A series of blog posts becomes a free guide.
• Find at least three uses for every piece of content
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Gather Continuous Feedback
• Monitor social media for questions, comments
• Provide mechanism to solicit content ideas
• Ask clients about your content efforts when they come in for appointment
• Poll your audience annually
How Do We Get It All Done?!
• Create a plan so it’s easier to divide the workload
• Hire a full or part-time content marketing manager
• Hire a skilled freelancer on Upwork or Fiverr
• Hire a virtual assistant specializing in content marketing/social media from somewhere
like Worldwide 101.
• Contact a local college or university and bring on an intern who is studying marketing,
communications or journalism to build the plan and execute the content. You may be
able to do this in exchange for course credit rather than pay!
Have Fun!
This is your opportunity to showcase your unique brand personality and voice. Get creative!
If you’ve never done video before, experiment with simply using your phone. If you’re a closet
artist or photographer, create and capture unique images. The more you can have fun when
creating content marketing, the more engaging the content will be to delight your clients, as well
as attract new ones.
Keep Building Your Content
Marketing Muscle!
Content Marketing Advice and Insights:
Content Marketing Institute is chock full of articles and stories about anything you need to
know related to content marketing: tools, best practices, writing tips. Subscribe to their email
updates or just browse their truly fabulous articles, such as these posts in particular:
10 Content Marketing Strategies That Will Make You A Better Marketer
5 Modern Content Marketing Best Practices for Getting Found
54 Content Writing Examples, Tools, Tips and Resources
Convince and Convert is another trusted resource full of videos, articles and the like on how to
provide better content and effectively use social media to get results.
Savvy Sexy Social is a wonderful YouTube channel run by social media and content expert Amy
Schmittauer. Her specific expertise is using video to attract more business but she covers much
more. Her audience tends to be smaller businesses with limited time, budget and resources so
her advice will be helpful. Plus she’s very entertaining and practical.
www.red-slice.com © 2017, Maria Ross, All Rights Reserved 5
Find articles to help you and your team become a better writer and content marketing creator at
Copyblogger.
Social Media Etiquette:
Etiquette for Twitter
Etiquette for Facebook
Etiquette for LinkedIn
Etiquette for Instagram (PS, this one is hilarious!)
Etiquette for Pinterest
Great Books:
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk: A network-by-network look at what works and
what does not in social media–including Before and After post makeovers. One of the most
helpful reads out there for doing social media right.
Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That
Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business by Ann Handley: A fabulous primer into all things
content marketing and how to make every vehicle work. Once you choose which tactic to go
with, you can use this book to guide creation.
Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer: Content
marketing leaves you open to all types of public haters. This book covers why listening to your
critics enhances your business, when and how to respond to the negativity–especially if posted
publicly–and how to use those moments to either boost your brand or turn that hater into a
raving fan.
www.red-slice.com © 2017, Maria Ross, All Rights Reserved 6
ABOUT MARIA ROSS
Maria Ross is a brand strategist, author and
speaker who believes cash flow and creativity
are not mutually exclusive. As creator of Red
Slice, she advises startups, solopreneurs and
small businesses on how to craft irresistible
brands. Maria is the author of Branding Basics
for Small Business: How to Create an Irresistible
Brand on Any Budget, (2nd Edition) and the
newly launched eBook series, The Juicy Guides
for Entrepreneurs, as well as her powerful
personal memoir, Rebooting My Brain.
A dynamic speaker, she has delighted
audiences ranging from The New York Times
to the Chamber of Commerce to BlogHer and
has appeared in and written for numerous Maria Ross
media outlets, including MSNBC, ABC News, Brand Strategist, Author & Keynote Speaker
The Huffington Post, Forbes.com, NPR and
Entrepreneur Magazine. Maria lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with her husband, toddler
son and their precocious Black Lab mix. Learn
how to tell your irresistible story at red-slice.
com or spark a conversation with Maria on
Twitter @redslice.
Sign up for my email tribe for insights and
inspiration AND get a free brand guide to boost
your popularity! Check out the details here.
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