How to Do External Content Marketing Effectively

 The marketing department of Netpeak Software is conventionally divided into two teams: “internal” and “external”. Internal is engaged in brand promotion from the first person and generating content for the company's own sites (corporate blog, mailing list, social networks, Telegram channel, etc.).

Content for sowing on external sites. I will tell you more about how it is built and what stages the work on external content marketing involves in this article.

Search for sites for seeding content

The first stage in the work of any content marketer interacting with external platforms is to search for target media, information partners, and opinion leaders.

In our case, target media include:

• Personal blogs of marketing and SEO specialists.
• Large corporate blogs that have transformed into authoritative specialized media (Pressfeed, TexTerra, MadCats).
• Profile Internet media: blogs, online magazines, Telegram channels, Youtube channels, etc.
• Small corporate blogs with a related audience and a large reach among the clients (users) of the company.
• Separately, I note that interaction with the latter in our case is built through the partner relations manager.

Search algorithm

The search for sites is carried out in several ways:

• through a search in Google / Yandex;
• via Keyword Analysis in Serpstat;
• Through Keyword Analysis and Content Explorer at Ahrefs;
• through news aggregators (for example, anderspink.com);
• through lists like the Top 50 SEO Blogs of 2018;
• through blogging platforms like Medium.

Site evaluation algorithm

In our case, it is rather difficult to determine the value of a site without specialized tools. Often the first impression of the site runs counter to the results that later bring cooperation with it. Sometimes a blog with an outdated design, lurid fonts, and syntax errors can bring many more clicks and purchases than a perfectly laid out, modern, and impeccably competent blog.

Building communication with bloggers and editors

Composing a chain of letters

When you connect with influencers, major blogs, and the media, you are unlikely to use a template without changing the original text. For them, as a rule, unique letters are drawn up in which you demonstrate your interest in the work of the selected media, author, or opinion leader. For example, in a nutshell, share your positive impressions from some of the latest publications and ask the author's opinion on a thematically related issue.

In any case, each communication is built in several stages.

A letter with the main offer.

Contains brief information about the company, a clearly articulated proposal, and a list of the main benefits from the blogger's point of view.

• First reminder letter.
• In addition to the repeated question, it contains a summary of the previous letter so that the addressee does not need to look for the initial offer.
• A second reminder letter with an attention-grabbing headline.
• The text of the letter contains a proposal to get in touch and discuss cooperation in the way the blogger envisions it.
• The final letter asking for at least some answers.
• It is necessary to understand whether it is worth further trying to attract the blogger to the dialogue.

Each of the subsequent letters is sent when a reply to the previous one has not been received. We compose letters by hand, but there are a number of solutions on the market to automate this procedure.

Basic rules of communication

There is no formula for a perfect letter that guarantees you a 100% response and agreement on further cooperation. However, we have identified a number of basic rules that we adhere to when communicating with most bloggers and editors:

Do not use anglicisms where it is inappropriate and where it is better to use understandable Russian-language counterparts.

Structure of the text

• Do not use sentences that are too long, too complex, or cumbersome. This is a sign of clericalism, which causes negativity in the online sphere.
• Be open, friendly, and courteous to the addressee. A pretentious and arrogant tone is not something you can use to win the favor of a blogger or editor. But don't confuse friendliness and ease with familiarity.
• Write "you" with a small letter.
• Clearly write down the terms of cooperation and inform the blogger about the benefits that cooperation with you promises him.
• Let the blogger know what you expect from him, but do not put it in a directive.
• Refer to the blogger by name.
• End the letter with an interrogative sentence, thereby inviting the blogger to enter into a dialogue.
• Do not use more than two active links in the text, so that the letter does not end up in the spam folder.
• Choosing Topics and Writing Articles for External Content Marketing

Finding ideas for content

As we start working on the next piece, we turn to several main sources of ideas that help set the direction of work and indicate exactly what tasks our content should solve.

Support and sales managers

They know better than anyone else about the professional pain of our current and potential clients. Do not hesitate to contact them for help: they will be happy to share with you the cases that they have to analyze together with users from day today.

Analyzing the most viral topical content with Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs' Content Explorer allows you to find the most viral and in-demand content for a particular target request. It is measured in terms of user engagement (Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest reposts) and provides insight into what content is most in-demand and shared with users the most.

Analysis of competitors' content using parsing in Netpeak Spider

If among your competitors there is one whose content is most indicative for your niche, you can focus your efforts on analyzing only one of them. To identify the most viewed, commented, and in-demand content of a competitor, you can use parsing to extract the data of open view counters, likes, and other indicators of engagement.

Parsing is done as follows:

• Open any content page of a competitor site, find the counter you are interested in. Select it with the left mouse button and call the context menu with the right mouse button.
• Select the "View code" command and in the window that opens with the code, find the line responsible for displaying the counter data (it will be highlighted on hover).
• Right-click on it and select Copy → Copy XPath.
• Launch Netpeak Spider, go to "Settings" → "Scraping" and enable the "Use HTML data parsing" option.
• Select the XPath data type and the Inner Text search scope, and insert the XPath of the item you are looking for into the search bar. For convenience, give the stream a name that corresponds to the type of data being extracted - "Likes", "Shares", etc.
• Click "OK" to save the settings and close the current window.
• Go to the side panel and on the "Parameters" tab uncheck all parameters, except those specified in the "Parsing" item.
• We enter the address of the analyzed site into the search bar and start scanning. At the end of the procedure, the results can be found in the "Scanning" → "Parsing" tab on the sidebar.