Unbounce Blog Team Takeaways from 2016

Since I joined the Unbounce household three years in the past, our advertising and marketing staff has grown from seven to 35. The content material staff alone has grown from two to 12.

That sort of development comes with quite a lot of potential to do thrilling issues.

However scaling a staff rapidly additionally uncovers inefficiencies, and ends in a helluvalotta rising pains.

Which is okay, actually. I’m not a lot of a jock, however I do know that with out ache there is no such thing as a acquire.

2016 specifically was a extremely productive yr for the content material staff at Unbounce. We had been in a position to repair quite a lot of inefficiencies in our processes, and experiment with issues that we simply didn’t have the bandwidth for earlier than.

Briefly, we pulled the plug on what wasn’t working and doubled down on what was working.

When you’ll permit me to, I need to share a few of our largest takeaways with you. Partially as a result of I wanna exhibit our good points (#humblebrag), but additionally as a result of I wanna forestall your pains.

(P.S. A lot of this progress may be attributed to an enchancment methodology we began utilizing referred to as the Improvement Kata, which could possibly be the topic of its personal 10,000-word publish. …However you’ll be able to be taught all about it in this 60-minute webinar.)

Course of enhancements: If one thing is painful, it’s as a result of it’s damaged

Once I started work at Unbounce in 2014, I used to be the principle individual devoted to the weblog. I spent my days writing, modifying and ensuring that we maintained our traditionally excessive editorial requirements.

However I used to be doing this in a silo, so after we started onboarding extra staff members who had been to contribute to the weblog, issues began to really feel somewhat painful.

All of a sudden, it was evident that we would have liked new processes. And the one option to repair inefficiencies was to first diagnose them:

• I used to be spending an excessive amount of of my time working with exterior contributors and responding to queries that I couldn’t concentrate on content material that contributed to large image enterprise goals
• I used to be used to being a lone wolf, however now my staff members wanted visibility into which posts had been within the pipeline (and at what stage)
• With extra staff members, prioritization of content material items was changing into harder

After itemizing all of the pains, we began in search of options as a staff.

What did the physician(s) order? You may examine all our course of enhancements in this post, however listed here are a few of my private favorites:

• We killed our “Write For Us” web page.
• We refused to tackle any publish that didn’t first have a completely fleshed-out pitch (you’ll be able to steal the template for it under).

However my favourite change was one which alleviated a ton of ache…

Deal with weblog posts like campaigns

Once I began running a blog in 2008, the #1 piece of recommendation I used to be given was to ascertain a posting frequency and then keep on with it.

However final yr, at advertising and marketing conferences and throughout the net, I started to listen to whispers of one thing completely different: publish much less, however publish deeper.

This suggestion was enticing to me as a result of I’d been working arduous for 2 years to guarantee that our editorial calendar was crammed with back-to-back actionable articles. I used to be in a position to keep a frequent publishing schedule, however this resulted in me neglecting one thing way more vital: a sound distribution technique.

We had been working arduous to create superior content material, however weren’t making the time to make sure that folks would take discover.

So in 2016, we began experimenting with treating weblog posts like campaigns.

What do I imply by this? Taking the time to plan, write and promote epic posts — the sort of stuff that makes your CMO drop their work and share the publish in a department-wide e-mail — even when it means dialing again on publishing frequency.

Extra particularly, “marketing campaign” posts undergo 5 phases (read about them in detail in this post):

1. Decide the objective of your publish so you’ll be able to decide later whether or not or not it was profitable (and information the content material of the publish).
2. Do key phrase analysis if applicable so your publish will proceed to get natural visitors.
3. Loop in influencers who will help you amplify your content material after you hit publish. Embrace quotes — as Andy Crestodina mentioned in his keynote at Content material Advertising World, “An ally in content material manufacturing is an ally in content material distribution.” Past that, begin eager about distribution technique earlier than you write a single phrase.
4. Create customized weblog property that you simply’d prefer to see in your personal social media feeds. Consider how one can create a constant design expertise throughout all channels.
5. Distribute in line with a predetermined plan. Milk all of your channels for every thing they’re value.

We get a lot extra out of posts after we take this well-rounded method — we really feel happier and extra strategic (as an alternative of feeling like we’re on a content material farm). It feels much less painful and it really seems like much less work. Right here’s one other nice bit I heard at Content material Advertising World:

Do not take shortcuts, they take too lengthy. @soniasimone #CMWorld #contentmarketing pic.twitter.com/D096JIjC5Z

— The Narrative, LLC (@TheNarrativeLLC) September 7, 2016

Extra of a spirit of experimentation

Optimization is such a core a part of our enterprise — we preach it in our webinars, on our podcast, on the weblog. “All the time be testing” echoes by the hallways to the extent that it’s turn into a little bit of a cliché.

But, when it got here to truly conducting assessments on our weblog and different content material, we had been faster to make excuses than find time for optimization. Not as a result of we had been slackers — fairly the alternative — however as a result of we had been too targeted on furiously pumping out content material to take a step again and try the larger image.

Till we determined to simply do it ✔️️ and had been impressed to launch a two week optimization experiment. For the experiment, we halted publishing and targeted solely on optimizing evergreen content material. In a nutshell we:

1. Researched high visitors posts
2. Freshened up the content material of the publish to maintain them evergreen
3. Optimized these posts for lead technology (this half was key)

You may learn all about our experiment (and the way it resulted in 700 new leads for us) in this post. Or simply seize the guidelines under and get began.

Our primary takeaway? Optimization isn’t only for conversion charge optimizers and efficiency entrepreneurs. Content material entrepreneurs stand to realize quite a bit by taking a step again, too. Even when it means briefly forgetting about your editorial calendar.

Extra accountability

Everyone seems to be conscious of sure inefficiencies and pains inside their group or on their staff, however seldom can we make the time to take possession of those and really resolve to repair them.

I’d encourage you to take a step again and take into consideration what hurts and what bandaids you have got at your disposal. It could appear daunting or like quite a lot of work at first, however I feel you’ll discover that it pays off in the long term.