It’s been around two years since we first started providing content marketing services. As a young company with limited experience, running the agency to help brands get heard has been a challenge.
Nevertheless, in the short time we’ve been in the industry, we’ve helped market leaders and start-ups increase their web presence. This includes growing a client’s blog traffic by 114%.
Here’s how we’ve been running our content marketing services at Oats.
We focus on results-driven content
When we first started doing content for our sister web design agency JIN Design, it was mainly app and web copywriting.
Apart from writing web copy, there was more that we could do to help companies bring in traffic to their websites.
So we decided to branch out and started doing blog articles for their websites. More specifically, we began focusing on doing SEO articles.
Each of these SEO articles is created with the sole purpose of helping brands increase their Google search presence, allowing them to get seen more easily by their target audience.
But getting seen isn’t enough. We need to ensure that the articles are useful and relevant enough for people to click on them. This means writing catchy and enticing titles, meta descriptions, and social media captions.
And we don’t stop the work after we’ve published the articles. We track their performance and look for ways to improve them (and their rankings on the search results page).
Learn more about the story of how our content marketing agency came about here.
We follow a scalable content process
There are times when we had to produce around 15 to 20 articles per month. From research and writing, to editing and publishing, there’s a lot of work to be done. And with a lean team of four, there had to be a process that allowed us to run our content marketing services effectively.
Audit the client’s content
When we first take on a project, we start by looking at the keywords the client is ranking for, as well as what they should rank for based on our competition analysis. Through the competition analysis, we pick out the content gaps between the client, their competitors, and the industry.
We also take into consideration the keywords that the client wants to do well for. This could include a specific product term or a particular partnership with another brand.
In addition, we identify the kinds of content that others are doing well in. All this helps us to determine the type of content and topics for the articles.
Propose the content strategy
Once we’re done auditing the content, we propose to the client how we’re going to carry out the content production. We lay out the administrative matters such as the production timeline and review process, as well as the content strategy.
Each content strategy is different and depends on the particular project. In general, it comprises the main keywords and topics to do, as well as suggestions on the type of content.
Here are some of the content we’ve done for our clients:
On top of these guides and listicles, we usually suggest doing infographics, especially for more complex topics. This is because people tend to understand and remember what they see more than what they read. In fact, people are 323% better at following instructions with text and illustrations, than instructions without illustrations.
On the other hand, content marketing isn’t just about creating new content. Existing content can also be repurposed.
Sometimes, we propose to optimise existing articles, as well as use old content to create case studies and whitepapers. Optimising an article could include adding more internal links, updating the information if it’s outdated, and adding more relevant content.
Execute the content strategy
After getting a client’s approval, we dive deep into the content planning and production, starting with keyword research.
Research the keywords
Our research involves analysing the industry and competitor keywords, and we usually use Ahrefs for this.
At this stage, we narrow down the keywords and topics worth doing, such as those with high search volume but low competition. This is because these keywords are easier to rank on Google.
For instance, if there’s a high competition keyword that a client wants to do, we usually propose a similar or long-tail keyword with lower competition to get better results.
We’ll then propose this list of keywords and topics to the client for approval before we start drafting the outlines.
Craft the outlines
We start by doing a comprehensive research on the topics that we’ll be doing. For each article, we nail down the main angle and key points, and outline how they’ll flow.
We only start content production after we get the go ahead from the client.
Draft high-quality articles
We work with a team of writers and editors to write and edit the articles. For articles that require infographics, we get the help of our sister graphic design studio, The Visual Team, to create them.
With every client project, we have a list of requirements that our writers and editors follow, so that the articles are written according to the client’s brand voice and guidelines.
Learn more about how brand voice can help with your website here.
To ensure our articles can perform well on search engines and bring in traffic, we follow a list of SEO best practices that have been working for our experiments and past client work.
But creating content that’s Google-friendly isn’t the end of it. Ultimately, our target audience are humans, not robots. So we make it a point to craft content that’s readable and easy to understand.
To provide our target audience with relevant and useful content, we fact check to verify that all information is accurate and up to date. We also include the sources where needed.
Last but not least, our articles go through a grammar and plagiarism checker to ensure that the content is unique and error-free.
Find out more about the SEO best practices that we’ve been using here.
Publish the content
After getting the client’s feedback and approval, we move onto the publishing phase. We usually manage the publishing schedule for our clients.
Just like our content production, we follow a strict publishing guideline.
For instance, for any image we include in our content, we use tools such as tinyjpg to compress and optimise it before uploading. This helps reduce page load time and improves rankings on search engines. We also include relevant keywords in image file names to make the content more SEO-friendly.
Here’s a summary of how we run our content marketing services:
| Our process | |
| Audit the client’s content | Look at the keywords, topics, and type of content to do for the client |
| Propose the content strategy | Suggest the keywords, topics, and type of content to do, eg. guides, listicles, how-to guides, infographics, etc. |
| Execute the content strategy | – Research the keywords – Craft the outlines – Draft the articles – Publish the content |
Working with our clients
When working with our clients, we don’t just focus on executing the content strategies for the money.
We want to work with clients that recognise content as a major part of their marketing strategy.
We believe this is important in maintaining a good working relationship with them. It also helps to make the work flow smoothly and efficiently.
At the same time, we don’t want to compromise on quality. While we do our best for each of our clients, we may pass on a client if we don’t have enough expertise on the topic.