Practical Content Marketing Advice That You Can Actually Use

Jodie King is the Head of Operations at SEO Traffic Lab — a digital marketing agency with the full spectrum of services from web development through to SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media management and email marketing.

Jodie received her Bachelor’s degree in English and Heritage Studies. She currently blogs for clients and also has her own fitness blog on Vertical Fitness, Gainsborough which she struggles to find enough time for.

Jodie enjoys doing boxing, pole dancing, and scuba diving whenever she gets the chance. In this interview, you’ll learn more about her, how she works, as well as some some practical content marketing advice.

What does your daily routine consist of?

First thing I do is walk the dogs and before bed I read a few chapters of a book — usually Terry Pratchett.

What’s your favorite blog, and why?

My favorite blog is Upworthy! Because they do an incredible job of marketing their articles, and I like their thought provoking slant.

What’s one of your favorite books? If you are reading a book now, what is it?

Currently I’m reading Terry Pratchett’s ‘Mort’, but my favorite book is probably ‘The Hogfather’ by the same author.

I also like crime thrillers, and I was a fan of “Patricia Cornwell Scarpetta” series — just for easy reading and suspense.

What’s your favorite advice you’ve ever received? And what’s one content marketing advice you can give?

Favorite advice: ‘Consider now and again what you enjoy about your life and what you don’t. Then dare to get rid of what you don’t… You’ll be happier for a spring clean’

Advice I can give: ‘Don’t avoid anything because it’s scary — that is the space where great things happen. As much as it’s nerve wracking, that initial push will be 9 times out of 10 worth the moments of anxiety and uncertainty’

What are your top 3 work tools/apps that you can’t live without?

• Google Analytics
• Canva
• Lightshot (screenshot tool)

Anyone specific inspired you or motivated you?

• Rand Fishkin — He is so engaging when he speaks.
• Boudicca — An inspirational leader.
• J K Rowling — I write in my spare time, so she’s inspiring in that she’s very articulate as well as a strong female role model.

What is the hardest challenge you’ve faced with content marketing?

It is always the sharing side of content creation that is a challenge, as well as getting clients engaged and behind their own content to the end.

What are some things you do to save time?

I use BuzzSumo to come up with ideas and AnswerThePublic to narrow down feasible Q&A’s to run through the copy. Other than that, I am a big believer in the manual creative process and the quality that brings with it.

Do you listen to music when working? If yes, what do you listen to?

Sometimes, especially when writing. I have quite an eclectic taste so anything from The Foo Fighters, Green Day, Thirty Seconds to Mars through to Enya, Adele & Bruno Mars.

What’s your favorite and least favorite thing about being a content marketing?

My favorite thing is those moments when you write poetry and you feel like a magician.

My least favorite thing is those moments when you can’t write for toffee and you are not sure what has subdued your creative flare.

Do you have one rule you try to stick to?

Always write when you are in the mood and don’t stop. Maximize those good days so the difficult days won’t sabotage your workflow too much.

One hack that you that you can share with us that might help out other content marketers.

Always start with bullet points. Then pad out so you have your flow and narrative on paper to provide a guide when you stray from the subject matter.

You should also try to use AnswerThePublic for inspiration from what other people search for.

What do you do when you are feeling stressed out or overwhelmed from work? How do you handle it?

I take walks or train in the evenings. Boxing is a great stress reliever! And I blast out some rock music when my focus dips.

Could you briefly describe what your content marketing strategy is?

Sure!

First, I bullet point my ideas. I think it is important to capture your creativity and emotive flow before you layer in the science.

Then I go to BuzzSumo to capture what is already out there and what is popular. I also use AnswerThePublic to get questions and statements around what I am trying to say to tie it in further with the user.

Afterwards, I do keyword research using Google Adwords Planner and the documents we have already created for the clients workflow. I tweak my bullet points and get the structure of the piece laid out. I write it and make sure there are plenty of images, video, quotes and breaks in the body text to keep it interesting.

Later on, I optimize the post and publish it. Then my team syndicates it manually to social sharing sites with fresh copy on each site and chase the client to share and engage with it.

At the end, we push the content over all social media channels, email it out to lists… And on the big pieces, we run a short display campaign to draw users into the site. Our target users are particularly B2B clients.

Next, I start the same process over again for another client.

If you use Start A Fire, how has it helped with your strategy? And if you haven’t tried it out yet, would you be interested in using it?

We have a few clients using Start A Fire and I, personally used to use it when I was blogging a lot. It does make the sharing process more simple. And I think with increased awareness Start A Fire could become a marketing staple.

How Will Your Content Marketing Strategy Start A Fire?

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Originally published at blog.startafire.com on October 19, 2016.