Content Marketing at Atomic Object

Atomic Object employs many content marketing tactics. One of the more interesting tactics is Atomic's blog Atomic Spin. This talk outlines how Atomic Object transitioned its culture to create an employee-authored blog where everyone contributes. The culture change helped transform the blog from publishing 10s of posts a year to publishing a new piece of content every day.

Transcript

1. CONTENT MARKETING Michigan Marketing Minds September 9, 2014 Shawn Crowley Vice President, Managing Partner - Grand Rapids shawn.crowley@atomicobject.com
2. ATOMIC OBJECT Atomic Object is a consultancy that designs and creates web, mobile, desktop, and custom device software products.
3. 1. Attract and retain excellent employees that can solve challenging problems. 2. Attract and engage clients that have challenging problems or opportunities. CONSULTANCY MARKETING 101
4. Our goal is to build brand awareness by providing useful, high-quality content to people even if they don’t do business with Atomic. CONTENT MARKETING
5. Atomic’s Value Mantras •  Teach and Learn •  Give a Shit •  Share the Pain •  Own It •  Act Transparently VALUES ALIGNMENT
6. We believe we attract the clients and employees we want to work with by sharing our learnings, perspective, and passion. CREATING OUR OWN FUTURE
7. Open Source Tools Presentations Atomic Spin Great Not Big Crain’s Detroit Business Tutorials and Best Practices ATOMIC CONTENT MARKETING http://atomicobject.com/pages/Software+Commons https://github.com/atomicobject http://atomicobject.com/pages/Presentations https://spin.atomicobject.com http://greatnotbig.com http://www.crainsdetroit.com/section/blogCarlErickson http://atomicobject.com/pages/Resource+Lab
8. ATOMIC SPIN
9. BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BLOG 12/2004 - Spin launched. 7/2010 - We get serious. All employees (27 at the time) required to blog monthly. This was not easy... 6/2012 - Atomic hires first Marketing Coordinator. Lisa edits, SEO checks, and schedules posts. First publish 5/week, then 7/week. 5/2014 - Establish guidelines for Spin post topics. Posts must be directly useful to one of our marketing targets (clients or job candidates). No more posts like "How to choose a digital camera," "Why I love Uber," etc. 8/2014 - Lisa begins requesting specific, client-focused posts from employees.
10. 1. Current and ongoing content and SEO value for marketing and sales. 2. Attract clients and employees that think like us. 3. Promote introspection and refinement. SPIN HYPOTHESES
11. Diverse content related software product development and company culture: •  Atomic Business Practices •  Resources for Clients •  Project and Team Management •  UX & Design •  Development •  Platforms & Languages ATOMIC SPIN CONTENT
12. Everyone in the company participates Marketing coordinators edit and manage publishing schedule Publish one new post every day PARTICIPATION STRUCTURE
13. MANAGING PARTICIPATION
14. QUALITY Manages the Spin’s quality and structure Reviews and edits every post for structure and grammar Manages guidelines about what type of content can be published Identifies gaps and opportunities and recommends ideas for posts Lisa Tjapkes - Atomic’s marketing coordinator
15. DISCOVERABILITY SEO 1. Use Google Keyword Planner (https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner) and conversations with the author to choose a target Keyword Phrase. 2. Use that keyword phrase in the URL, SEO title, and SEO description. We have a WordPress plugin that allows us to add an SEO title and description. 3. Improve SEO title and SEO description with search users in mind. Create titles and descriptions that are engaging and informative. 4. Add keyword phrase to article text and section headers where possible. Social Media 1. Share though Atomic’s social media channels. 2. Author’s share via their personal social media channels.
16. TIME COMMITMENT Content Creation 2013 - 1356 hours 2014 - 849 hours so far (1255 hours projected) Editing, Promoting, Managing 500 hours/year
17. TIME COMMITMENT
18. POSTS PER YEAR
19. TRAFFIC
20. VIEWS PER POST - 2014
21. TRAFFIC SOURCES - 2014
22. RESULTS Useful content for internal teams Useful content for sales and customer education Blog is cited by prospective clients and employees Blog is recognized by peers Contacted and used by aggregators
23. BEYOND SPIN Website redesign with better client resources Newsletter More intentional focus on open source tools and presentations
24. THANK YOU