Content Strategy Quickstart

It stinks to be on the content hamster wheel. 

You churn out whatever content you can. Rush, publish, repeat. 

Results are lackluster (and honestly, you’re probably just contributing to the noise).

But you’re a smart, driven marketer—this content thing shouldn’t be so hard!

This course gives you the foundation you need to become the strategic content marketer that makes a real impact for the business.

In just a few hours, this course will teach you how to create a B2B content strategy you can put to work right away. 

Step by step, with tons of details (we’re creating a new standard for the word “actionable” here).

This course will help you if you’re a:

• Content marketer who feels like you’re just churning out whatever you can, but without a strategy
• Small marketing team trying to get a content engine going—and spinning your wheels in the meantime
• Freelancer who wants to help your clients get more out of their content marketing

You’ll learn:

• What you need to know about your target audience—and how to find the info
• How to prioritize themes and topics for your content
• How to align your content to different stages of the buyer’s journey
• How to tell if any of your campaigns are actually working
• How to transition from strategy to content creation
• The 3 distribution channels B2B brands should start with

And when you’re finished, you’ll have:

• A complete content strategy document to guide your content production
• A full editorial calendar, ready for you to execute
• Confidence you’re doing this content thing right
  

Testimonials

"This small group of content experts have put together a no-nonsense, uber practical guide to getting started with content strategy and planning. They include everything you'd need to start from 0 — and everything you likely could be using to take a step back and ask yourself if you're doing content strategy the right way." 

“Building a B2B content strategy from scratch can be overwhelming. Where should you even start? What areas should you focus on? How should you measure success? This course starts with the one thing that matters most in marketing—understanding your customer. From there, it shares the actionable tips and insights you’ll need to get your team aligned and moving in the right direction.”

Syllabus

Lesson 1: Identify Your Audience

• The key pieces of a content persona
• Documenting your personas in a matrix
• Where to find persona insights
• Assignment: Fill out customer personas template

Lesson 2: Build Your Topic Strategy

• What do we mean by “topic strategy”?
• Generating topic ideas
• Determining & scoring keyword relevance
• Getting volume and competition data 
• Understanding your topic strategy
• Assignment: Finalize topic strategy

Koala Break 🐨

Lesson 3: Align Content to the Buyer’s Journey

• The simplest way to understand the buyer’s journey
• What buyers are trying to accomplish at each stage
• How to break topics down by journey stage 
• Assignment: Fill in your buyer’s journey template

Lesson 4: Plan and Schedule

• Components of a content tracker
• How to populate and use your content tracker
• Assignment: Complete your content tracker

Lesson 5: Measure Performance

• What are KPIs?
• Choosing the right KPIs for your content program
• How to use common tools to measure each KPI 
• Assignment: Complete your KPI template

Lesson 6: Build a Praise Jar 🙌

Lesson 7: Plan for Distribution

• An overview of your distribution options
• 3 B2B distribution channels you should start with—and how to use them
• A few unpopular opinions about content distribution
• Assignment: Commit to your distribution channels

FAQs

Who is this course for?

Anyone who’s feeling overwhelmed and undervalued when it comes to their content marketing efforts. 

This course will give you the foundation you need to create B2B content in a more strategic, customer-centric, and effective manner. It’s a great resource for marketers and writers who need or want to take ownership of the strategy side of content marketing (in-house or for clients). It’s also a great course for any content owner who feels intimidated by the technical side of SEO.

Who is this course NOT for?

Experienced B2B content marketing strategists. This is an introductory course that teaches the fundamentals of getting up and running with a data-informed B2B content strategy. If you’ve already nailed those skills, you may want a more advanced course.

What will I learn in this course?

You’ll learn exactly what needs to be in your content strategy, how to assemble it, and how to translate this information into individual content pieces to populate your calendar. You’ll learn, step-by-step:

• How to find and document the right audience insights
• How to use search data to prioritize your topics
• How to break topics down into content pieces aligned to the buyer’s journey
• How to measure your performance, depending on your content maturity 
• How to transition from strategy and planning to content production

What can I expect to walk away with?

A full content strategy document that you can present to your wider team or your client to guide content production. In each lesson, we’ll walk you through one section of the content strategy workbook. By the end, you’ll have a complete strategy document—from audience personas to content calendar.

Is this course worth it?

It’s a steal when you consider we sell these kinds of strategies to clients for $5,000 to $7,500. If you’re an in-house marketer, you’ll quickly recoup your costs in efficiency and performance (stop paying for blog posts that don’t perform!). If you’re a freelancer, you can recoup the expenses (and then some) with a single content strategy gig.

What else should I know?

We’re very nice and can be pretty funny sometimes, too. But the goofy kind of funny. And a tad weird. Mmmmk?

A Bit About Us

Nicole has been a writer since the first grade—when she plagiarized her first book.

Thankfully, first grade is fairly forgiving, and no harm came from submitting Little Bear as her own in the young author competition.

Nicole has since learned the value of reliably producing high quality original content. For the past 8+ years, she has been helping B2B brands like Epsilon, Harte Hanks, FullContact, Strategyn, and ETQ get strategic with their content—to build audiences and drive demand. She now provides fractional content director services for marketers who are ready to stop spinning their wheels and make a real impact through content marketing. 

Justin started his career in a strange place—finance—after spending most of college reading Latin and Greek. 

Through participation in a series of obscure hobbies, Justin eventually found himself in a succession of marketing jobs at companies including MongoDB, GitHub, and Dremio. Frustrated with how hard SEO and content performance is for marketers, Justin decided to put his spreadsheet and data skills to use to help writers and content marketers feel more confident in what they’re producing, and why.

Justin is now a partner at Ercule, a full-stack agency with a focus on SEO and content performance. Ercule uses data, process, and code to help content marketers drive revenue. 

Josh is a seasoned content creator who’s newer to the world of content marketing – which made him the perfect person to support us with writing and production for this course.

Before joining up with the Ercule agency in 2019, Josh spent more than a decade creating written and video content for a wide range of clients. He’s produced digital comedy for Microsoft, animation for Universal, journalism for New York Times Co., and documentary video for numerous nonprofit organizations.