I talk a lot about employing content strategy for authors and entrepreneurs, but how do you know that it really works? I want to share with you the results of my work with one of my best clients so you can judge for yourself.
First of all, if you are building a business, you need an audience. You may be an entrepreneur or an author, or both. Either way, the way that you drive awareness now is different. You can’t just produce a final product and then try to shout about it once it’s done. There’s too much noise out there—you won’t get heard. You need to build an audience, and you need to do the work before you actually need your audience.
Let me introduce you to my client, Dr. Devorah Heitner. She is a PhD (Media Studies) from Chicago who works with parents and children about the issues of the digital age. Her consulting business is called Raising Digital Natives (I love the name, it’s perfect for what she does). Devorah is an expert, an authoritative voice in a field that is changing fast. People trust her because she’s doing real work with real parents and children, not just talking about theory.
This story is about finding an audience of audiences. I took on Devorah as a client a couple months ago. I’ve been helping her organize her ideas into a book, using her blog as at least part of the first draft. The first post that I helped her with was called “Every Day Is Picture Day.” I loved her concept, and I thought it would be very sharable. Everyone can relate to it, and it provides a good way to understand to the new challenges that kids face today. She wrote a great first draft, which I edited, tightened, and polished for her—including tagging, optimizing, and all the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes a blog post ready for primetime. Simply put, blogs perform better with a content strategy behind them.
We published “Every Day Is Picture Day” on Tuesday, May 20 (though I like to experiment with timing, I tend to favor Tuesdays for blog posts). We promoted it through social channels, as Devorah has a pretty good-sized audience. With her permission, let me share some data on the results. She got total 546 page views that day (from 285 site “sessions”), and about 1,500 total page views over the next few days (from 808 site “sessions”). What’s significant is that 84.9% of these “sessions” were brand new visitors, who had never been to Devorah’s site before. You can see from the graphic that this was well above her daily average. The graphic shows the 8-week period (3/29–5/24) leading up to the spike.
Fig.1, Site entries over 8-week period (March 29–May 24, 2014)
Why the spike?
- She has a really great concept. An evocative title, too. I credit Devorah for this entirely.
- The content is really strong. The post comes through on the promise of the title. This is really essential if you are going to get people to share it. It’s directly relevant—and useful—to her audience. Again, these were all Devorah’s ideas. My role was to make her ideas into something that would really stand out, get noticed, and have an impact. The result was a tightly constructed post built around a strong idea.
- I optimized it for searchability, discoverability, and sharing. Devorah’s been writing for a while, and slowing building her audience into what it is today. She’s done great work, but I am happy to see her get a nice boost of awareness due to my efforts. This was the first of Devorah’s content that was treated in this way, and you can see from the graphic above that this stuff works!
We’d be really happy with that as a great first start, but we got an added bonus a few weeks later. Because of all the factors above, a prominent voice in Devorah’s field took notice. Dr. Laura Markham at AHA Parenting shared the post to her audience of 68K fans on Facebook on Wednesday, June 18. Devorah’s site saw a huge spike of 8,475 page views in one day (from 3,752 site “sessions”). Over the next few days, nearly 5,000 readers came to the site, 92.6% of whom were brand new visitors. That’s about 5,200 brand new visitors during these two spikes alone. What’s more, you could see many of these newly introduced visitors clicking around on her speaking and consulting pages in particular, viewing 2.23 pages/session on average. If even a few of these folks become clients for her, it will be worth all the effort.
Here are the results. Again, this is for the 8-week period (4/27–6/21) leading up to the spike. The relatively “small” bump in the middle of the graph is actually the spike from Fig. 1. You can also see the huge change in social “entry channels” due to Facebook, from 32% to 66%.
Fig.2, Site entries over 8-week period (April 27–June 21, 2014)
This one blog post, treated differently, is making a huge impact. It has almost half the “entries” of the entire site over the past 6 months.
- Post = 12,108 hits
- Site = 26,291 hits
- Period = Jan 1 thru Jun 30, 2014
Now, we have a lot more work to do. Devorah’s in the middle of two book projects, doing speaking gigs, running workshops, and raising her own digital native. But, she understands that you can’t wait until the book is done to connect with your audience. If you are trying to run a business, being an author is only a part of that. For those of you who think that you don’t have the time, Devorah is a great case study for why you should make the time. This stuff works.
I urge you to follow Devorah, especially if you are a parent. Not only does she offer great advice, but you’ll get to watch her establish herself in her own right in this field. I think she is going to be a star. I’m happy to take part in her success, to support her goals, and to give her a better chance at making connections with her future clients.
—
How can a content strategy help you?
For more about Content Strategy for Businesses, please see the “For Entrepreneurs” section of this site.
To hire me for specific help with your content strategy, please see my “Helping Entrepreneurs” page, or contact me directly here.
For more about Content Strategy for Authors, please see the “For Authors” section of this site.
To hire me for specific help with your content strategy, please see my “Helping Authors” page.