Content Marketing Style Guide

We need to create great content, no matter what. As we want to be a reference on the digital marketing and startups scene, it’s important to be consistent with the quality of our articles and materials.

In order to accomplish this, we need a guide with a set of ideas (not rules) on how we should create and design our content.

Everything here will be strict enough for us to not lose focus but flexible enough for us to change whenever we feel right.

Route’s Content Style Guide Index:

  1. Objectives
  2. Sources of Inspiration
  3. Research
  4. Types of Content
  5. Content Structure
  6. Content Frequency
  7. Content Distribution

Let’s start creating great content!

Objectives

When deciding what to write about or what type of content to create, it should focus on achieving these 5 objectives:

  • Educating the market and the readers in a way that every content has the potential to make them better at their work and lives;
  • Converting the reader from a simple visitor to a Lead;
  • Triggering in the Lead the desire to try Route;
  • Helping Route’s trial users to convert to paying customers;
  • Turn Route’s customers into great customers by helping them get results, so they’ll stay longer with us.

All posts must meet each stage of the Sales and Marketing Funnel, aiming for different goals:

  • Top Of the Funnel: content here should focus on bringing awareness and making our visitors have interest in what Route as a company is saying. Should help in acquiring and start activating visitors and leads;
  • Middle Of the Funnel: content for this stage should focus onmaking readers think about Route and start showing intentions of testing or purchasing our tool. Should help with lead activation and retention;
  • Bottom Of the Funnel: content for the BOFU should focus on helping leads and trials to evaluate and purchase our solution. Should help set the context for increasing revenue (by helping users decide Route is the best option).

Even though it’s not easy to make ideas go viral every content, in every stage, must answer this basic question: “would I share this with my network?”. It’s important to boost referrals through content created.

Sources of Inspiration

Route’s content must be original.

Writing about things other companies or professionals already wrote about is competing in a field that might be too crowded.

If it’s a subject that we feel is important for Route as a company, there must be ideas that will make the material the most complete piece of content in that subject: with data and our own opinions.

Places to find inspiration:

  • Most clicked topic on our Help;
  • Content to help users overcome their “Success Gap” when learning about Route;
  • Keyword research;
  • Route’s actual use cases, customer stories, Route’s own stories;
  • Support requests by our testers and users;
  • Questions people ask in foruns like Quora, Reddit, Inbound.Org about topics of our interest.

Research

Every data and information should be well researched and presented with credible sources. If it’s Route’s own data/opinion this must be left explicit within the post.

Can be the opinion of the company (WE/Route) or the opinion of the writer (I/MY).

Types of Content

Route’s content will be divided into:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos/Webinars
  • Ebooks
  • Help/Support guides

It’s important that all content types can be repurposed as other types within those listed above or even different types like GIFs and Audio/Podcast.

Content Structure

There is some important information that must be clear to the reader / writer.

For the reader

  • Content category: all materials should fit an important category for people working with Marketing Automation. If the main idea of the post is Lead Nurturing, this keyword must be set as the category. If Lead Nurturing is only a topic and not the main idea, the category shouldn’t be this keyword, but the keyword that defines the whole post (e.g. Marketing Automation);
  • Content tags: tags will be used to define which stage of the funnel the content fits better or if it’s just an update about our product and company. This tags will follow strict rules until we feel it’s time to change or add more (beginners, intermediate, advanced, product update).

For the writer

  • The writer: each content will be assigned for a specific writer;
  • The due date: each content will have a timeline and a date when it must be published;
  • The target keyword (category): each content will have to match one specific category;
  • The stage of the funnel (tag): each content will have a specific tag related to the stage of the funnel;
  • The SEO checklist: each content should have the keyword in the title, title with at least 40 characters, keyword in the first paragraph and inside content, outbound links, inbound links and text size more than 300 words (except help/support guides);
  • The approval: each content must go through an approval process that includes proof reading it, checking the formating, sources, image credits when needed, checking links, check headings (h1, h2, h3…).

Content Frequency

We will produce at least one new blog post per week and one new rich content (video, webinars, ebook) per month.

Help/Support guides will be produced when it’s needed.

Content Distribution

All content must be easy for our readers to share within their networks.

These are the key places for us to share our content:

  • Email Newsletter;
  • Facebook;
  • Twitter;
  • LinkedIn;
  • Growth Hackers;
  • Inbound.org.

Our Content Marketing Style Guide shouldn’t be a static document. As we learn from our readers and from our business, we will make every change necessary to achieve our goals.

To infinity… and beyond!