Some come to us with bulleted lists of initiatives to implement, raring to get started. They're the easy ones, but they're not all that common.

Who else do we talk to? Business leaders who are still defining their marketing plans. They know content is important, but they're not quite sure of how it fits into their business model or how they can use it effectively.

If you know content marketing is important, but aren’t sure what you need, when and how do you get started?

Here’s a three-step guide for content marketing newbies.

1. Finalize your business model first

One mistake we've seen? Hiring a content marketing consultant before you can clearly define what your business is.

While it’s important to focus on inbound marketing as part (or all) of your launch plan, make sure you’ve ironed out your business model first, focusing on how your service or product will operate and how you intend to differentiate yourself from existing competitors.

That knowledge is key in defining a content plan—while a content marketing agency or employee can offer some help without it, they can offer more specific tactical recommendations if you’ve laid the groundwork first, and know specifically what it is that you’re trying to market.

A number of great business plan templates are available to help you map out your strategy—for starters, take a look at Steve Blank’s Business Model Canvas. Filling out that template or a similar one can help your content strategist develop a far more comprehensive plan when you’re ready to engage his or her services.

2. Learn who your buyers are

Next, find out as much as you can about your ideal customers, so that you’ll be able to create content that’s compelling and drives them to action.

Use data and independent research to consider the specific types of people who are likely to use your solution, or employees who are likely to factor into a company’s decision-making process. For instance, an IT associate may be tasked with researching new cloud software solutions, but the ultimate decision may be up to a CTO, so you’ll need to consider both roles when developing your marketing content.

Consider mapping out buyer personas, which can help you clearly visualize your audiences and their needs. We'll cover this more in a future post, but for now, take a look at this article on Searchengineland to understand how to build a buyer persona and why.

Search engine optimization is also an important part of this learning process: To truly know your buyers, you need to know what phrases they’re likely to search for. Use Google’s keyword tool and other SEO tools to determine some of the most relevant keywords in your niche to incorporate when coming up with topic ideas. Unless you're a big e-commerce company, you probably don't need a specialized SEO consultant to do this for you—the basis of SEO is simply using intuitive language in well-written, linkable content.

3. Create a roadmap

Once you know what you’re trying to sell and who you want to sell it to, it’s time to develop your editorial calendar, based on your marketing priorities and budget.

Building a business blog and updating it with high-quality, insightful content every day is ideal, but if that doesn’t fit your schedule, even updating it a few times a month with linkable, SEO-optimized content will help you boost site traffic and brand visibility. Schedule future blog posts in your calendar, even if you don’t have the topics ironed out yet. It will help you stay accountable.

As well as regular blog posts, it’s also worth offering a free newsletter that provides tips and advice to your readers. You might also offer a special, too-good-to-turn-down, piece of content to encourage sign-ups—for instance, if you’re a fitness instructor, you could offer a free five-minute workout video. Chances are, if people enjoy it, they’ll be interested in paying for a full-length video, and it's a good way to collect their contact information for future promotions.

Over time, you’ll continually want to add to your content arsenal with more e-books, case studies, expert interviews, videos, and other valuable resources. There’s no need to launch into everything at once, but if you have a solid plan for your initial content strategy, you’re well on your way to inbound marketing success.

In future posts, I’ll talk more about the types of content to focus on, and how to determine your topics.

What other tips would you give to people who are new to content marketing? Or, if you’re just getting started, what other questions do you have about initiating the process?

It's time to bring on help. So do you hire a new employee to focus on marketing, or are you better off working with a content marketing agency?

True, it can be nice to have someone in the office to talk to. But the fact is, many organizations would get better value for money by using outside consultants to perform these tasks.

Here’s why.

It’s more expensive to hire an employee.

You may get a bit of sticker shock when you hear about a consultant’s hourly rate—but for most project-based work, you’ll save money in the long run by using a consultant instead of an employee. With employees, you’re responsible for providing equipment and office space, and paying payroll taxes, insurance costs, and other benefits. None of these “extras” come into play when working with a consultant: The hourly or project fee is all that you’ll ever need to pay. (Still wavering about the price? Check out my post over at Intuit for more insight into what goes into a contractor's hourly fee.)

Agencies can provide content marketing consultants with the specific experience you need.

When you hire a new employee, it often takes weeks or even months to train the person in the tasks you need help with. If you select an agency with experienced writers and content marketers, you’ll have access to people who already have specific expertise in the industries you’re looking for, and can hit the ground running with little to no advance training. Better yet, many agencies can put together customized teams of freelancers on demand with industry experience in your particular field.

Agencies can scale to meet your content demands.

When you hire a full-time employee, you need to pay that employee for 40 hours of work each week, whether or not you have 40 hours worth of actual work to assign her. By shifting to an agency-based model, you can contract with a content marketing consultant only when you have a project you need help with, saving the extra money you would have spent in salary. What’s more, instead of having one person’s services at your disposal, you have access to the agency’s entire team, which may include numerous writers, editors, designers, and social media marketers. If you’ve switched from a physical server to a cloud-based host, consider this the staffing equivalent.

Consultants understand what it takes to run a business.

Employees may be good at taking direction—but many of them don’t know the first thing about actually running a business. Consultants are business owners themselves. As such, they have a good understanding of all of the concerns you might have about marketing your business, dealing with vendors, managing cash flow and employees, and other business issues. Instead of working as your subordinates, you can consider them colleagues who have valuable advice to share. True, it can be an adjustment if you’re used to having people work “under” you, but if you’re open to it, you and your consultant can build a positive relationship based on trust and mutual admiration.

As you grow, it may be helpful to bring an experienced marketing director on board—but, especially while you're still ramping up and experimenting with your business model, choosing to outsource your content needs can be the most efficient way to build your brand.

If you're a business owner, have you hired in-house marketers, or do you rely on freelancers or a content marketing agency to conceptualize and produce your branded content? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be writing some blog posts going into more detail on the presentation, but in the meantime, take a look at the slides and feel free to send any questions or comments our way.

Unless you’re a huge e-commerce site, don’t: For most businesses, it’s not a good use of marketing dollars.

Why not?

Google doesn’t like heavily optimized SEO content.

In the early days of Google, companies could game the system by filling their pages with nonsensical articles that repeated the same keywords over and over, and buying and trading links with completely unrelated websites. These days, it’s game over for companies that don’t play nice: Google’s recent Panda algorithm update punished “content farms” like EHow and Demand Media, and the search engine is about to launch another attack on overly-optimized pages. Google’s made it clear that it’s prioritizing content that’s designed to appeal to human readers, not robots.

Most principles of search-optimization are simply common sense.

If you wanted to buy a wedding ring in Austin, Texas, would you be Googling “buy wedding ring Austin,” or would you be searching for “purchase a jeweled token of my everlasting love”? If you're a jewelry store, you're likely to have far better results by targeting users with the first set of keywords. In general, good SEO is simply about choosing the simplest, most intuitive words and phrases that people will be likely to use when looking for a company like yours, and using those terms in the headline and story summary instead of trying to be overly complex or clever. Take advantage of free tools like Google’s Keyword tool to see what people are searching for, and educate yourself with the wealth of information available at sites like Copyblogger, Search Engine Land, SEOMoz.

Good SEO takes time.

Never trust anyone who claims to guarantee you a first-page Google result for a particular term: If it can be done, it’s either a term that hardly anyone is searching for, or they’re using shady tactics that are likely to hurt your site in the long run. Increasing your pagerank mostly comes down to the effort you put into both creating and promoting your content. It’s all transparent—no magic tricks involved.

SEO is just a small part of your overall content strategy.

While search-engine optimization shouldn’t be ignored, it’s a small part of an overall content strategy that should include a focused approach to topic and format selection, social media promotion, blogger outreach, article syndication, guest-posting, and other important elements. Including relevant keywords in your articles is important, but if those keywords aren’t placed organically in high-quality articles, they won’t do you much good. As Brian Clark of Copyblogger writes in his helpful free e-book, “Google won’t treat you as relevant until others do first.” While choosing good keywords is important, your main goal should be in creating compelling content that provides genuine value to readers and will attract links and attention from influencers within your target audience.

So are all SEO agencies bad? That’s not what I’m saying at all: You’ll find a decent number of search marketing consultants who understand the importance of creating high-quality, highly relevant content that uses key phrases in moderation, and promoting that content through legitimate efforts. However, if you’re working with an agency, choose one that focuses on helping you build a comprehensive content strategy instead of focusing on keywords alone. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a site that even the robots won’t want to visit.

But while a weblog is simply a publishing medium like any other, many companies have an expectation that blog writers, no matter how experienced they may be, should be working for intern-level wages. Writer Carol Tice discussed this topic in 2009, and rates haven't improved since. I’ve seen sites offering as little as $5 per post; $30 is often considered a generous “market rate” for a thoroughly researched article that may even include an interview or two.

While you may be saving money on your marketing budget by paying low rates for blog posts, you’re doing your business a disservice. Why?

Low-wage writers aren’t motivated to create professional-quality work. If a blogger gets paid $20 for a post that took him two hours to write, he’d be better off flipping burgers, once you deduct self-employment tax and other expenses from his paycheck. Don’t expect him to double-check his facts, or take the time to make the revisions you’ve requested. It’s likely he’ll need to write nine or 10 more blog posts that same day to make a living income. Even if he’s a good writer (which, don’t get me wrong, many low-wage writers are), he simply can’t afford to put in the time to turn in a polished article.

Your blog is a representation of your business. Don’t think of your blog as ephemeral. Thanks to search indexing, entries submitted two years ago are still likely to be found today by potential customers, so it’s important to make sure that every single post provides an accurate representation of your company’s voice and viewpoint. If your blog posts tend to contain typos, run-on sentences, and faulty logic, your prospects might start to wonder whether your product will let them down, too.

Quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to getting traffic. Business owners often hire the lowest bidders for blogs because they believe it’s important to put up as much content as possible. If they pay more, they might argue, they’ll have less content, and therefore, fewer visitors.

That couldn’t be further from the truth: When you make the effort to seek out legitimate professional writers with magazine or corporate writing backgrounds and quality LinkedIn references, you can count on readable, useful content that provides real value to your target audience. Though posts may not be as frequent, high-quality content is far more likely to receive backlinks and social media promotion, which will, in turn, increase your search engine rankings.

In contrast, if you hire writers to crank out articles as quickly as possible, your site is likely to be penalized by search engines. Last year, Google’s Panda algorithm change sucked the organic search traffic away from “content farms” like Demand Studios and Associated Content, while it rewarded expert-written sites like the authoritative SEO blog SEOMoz. Pay professional rates for professional work—anywhere from $0.50 to $2 a word, depending on research needs, level of complexity, rights granted, and other criteria—and you’ll have a business blog that you can be proud of. Better yet, it’ll be attracting (not repelling) new business leads for you every day.

Here are a few ideas to help you curate great content in a minimum of time.

Five strategies for cultivating sources for great content:

1. RSS - Using an RSS reader like Google Reader or Feedly, compile a list of the best blogs and websites in your industry. Each day, take a look at the most recent posts, and bookmark those that you’d like to publicly acknowledge
2. Twitter lists - In addition to your RSS reader, look at the Twitter profiles of expert in your industry, and see which Twitter Lists are following them. Follow relevant lists there: You’re likely to find more great content that you can easily retweet.
3. AllTop - Guy Kawasaki’s AllTop aggregation site is the ultimate in ready-to-use curated content, featuring dozens of RSS feeds on hundreds of topics, ranging from parenting to weight loss to Apple computers.
4. Google custom searches - Set up Google searches for key phrases related to the subjects you’re interested in. You’ll receive regular alerts when new content in your target area appears anywhere on the Internet.
5. Check out comments - Look at popular blogs in your niche, and your own blog comment section if you have one, to find commenters who are linking back to their own related blogs. Take a look at their sites: You may find some little-known gems among them.

What next?

These strategies will help you find relevant, compelling, timely content to bookmark. But you’re not done yet: Tweet about your favorite posts, link to them on Facebook, and submit them on social sharing sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon. Curating content on a variety of popular platforms will raise your profile on each platform, and make other users more likely to link to your own content in turn.

You can also use these bookmarked links as resources in developing blog posts of your own, whether they consist solely of link round-ups or are focused around responding to a claim made in someone else’s post.

Finally, be sure to bring your own voice to the mix—much like a favorite mix tape, your curated content should say something about who you are, and why we should fall in love with you.

Case studies in content curation

Want to see who’s doing it right? Take a look at these curators.

Guy Kawasaki, of the aforementioned AllTop, features links to all things interesting on his Twitter feed. (He even uses some ghost-tweeters for assistance—not a bad idea if you’re short on time.)

Maria Popova, of the art and culture site Brain Pickings, curates beautiful artwork and design, fascinating quotes, unique films, and other items worthy of fascination on her Twitter feed and her blog.

Megan, the blogger behind the crafts-focused site notmartha.org, posts frequent round-ups of themed links relating to food, crafts, shopping, and other topics of interest, incorporating MetaFilter discussion threads, photos, and links to other blogs.

Who else is doing content curation well? Share your suggestions in the comments.

Depending on what you’re promoting, though, keyword campaigns can cost a lot of coin: If you want to include the word “insurance,” for instance, you could be paying a hefty $54.91 per click—which provides no guarantee that the clicker will purchase your services or even call you. If you don’t prepare for a campaign, you could be wasting a lot of money.

Here’s how to do it right.

Choose your keywords carefully - If you don’t want to pay the equivalent of a dinner out for every new site visitor, seek “long-tail” keywords that aren’t searched for quite as often. Instead of simply using “homeowner’s insurance” as a keyword phrase, try something more specific (and cheaper): “homeowner’s insurance in Florida,” for instance. Google’s Keyword Tool can help you find the right phrases for your needs and budget.

Use multiple campaigns - AdWords permits you to run up to 25 keyword campaigns at once, so focus on creating a number of compelling ads aimed at different audiences and using different keywords related to your site. If you sell shoes, run an ad for UGGS aimed at teens, and one for Orthaheels aimed at their grandparents.

Monitor your results and adapt your campaigns accordingly - Log into both your AdWords account and your site analytics account daily to learn how many people are clicking on your ads, and, of those people, how many site visitors are “converting” (performing a set action, such as buying a product or signing up for your newsletter). If the number of clicks is lower than you’d like, switch up your keywords to increase visitors; if the conversions are low, look at ways to optimize your AdWords landing pages so that visitors will turn into buyers.

Hannaford’s Fresh Magazine - The New England grocery store chain has its headquarters in Scarborough, Maine, and prides itself on providing fresh, locally-grown fruit and produce. The store offers a custom magazine, Fresh, which features content such as profiles of local farmers and producers; tips on entertaining; nutrition advice; and plenty of recipe featuring products available at Hannaford. The magazine is available for a nominal $2 fee, or free with a purchase of $25 or more. Fresh is well-written and well-produced, and serves as a great outlet to help Hannaford get its customers inspired to do even more home cooking.

L.L. Bean’s “The First Hundred Years” - L.L. Bean has built its brand on traditional, durable, outdoors apparel and gear. So instead of following the latest trends, the company is building nostalgic value by focusing on the L.L. Bean story with an interactive timeline that harkens all the way back to the creation of the Bean Boot in 1911. Though L.L. Bean’s content marketing program is more self-promotional in nature than Hannaford’s magazine, it helps to place the company as a timeless brand in customers’ minds.

Tom’s of Maine - Tom’s of Maine (producers of natural toothpaste, deodorant, and other bath products) has an eco-conscious, hippie vibe, so it’s no surprise that the company’s blog focuses on clever tips for greening your life, such as “DIY Valentines from the Recycling Bin” for the upcoming holiday.  Employees also show their ethics with posts about their volunteer activities, such as Bill’s story about bike-riding for MS. Tom’s of Maine’s blog fits its company to an all-natural, eco-friendly T.

Bates News - Bates College, the small liberal-arts school in Lewiston, has a clean, elegant web presence and compelling web content to draw in prospective students, engage current students, and keep alums connected to their alma mater. The site features multimedia profiles of students, alumni, and faculty, such as a recent audio slideshow of student David Longdon’s summer internship with a local sustainable agriculture program. The site also includes links to Bates-related news from other sources, which can help enhance the school’s credibility.

LiveWorkPortland - This site is funded by the Portland, Maine city government, with the aim of attracting qualified candidates to move to the Portland community and start businesses or work for area employers. The vibrant website includes profiles of up-and-coming “people to watch” in the Portland community; a blog that features trends, news, and events; resource guides for people considering moving to Portland; and a new in-person social network. In my view, it’s an ideal snapshot of a thriving creative community that I’m proud to be a part of.

Starting a company blog is simple and low-cost. It’s a way to establish subject matter authority, generate sales leads, and network with prospects and other industry professionals. But if you want to rise to the top of the RSS reader, there are a few things to think about. Hawkins Multimedia has done content strategy and blog content development for dozens of clients, ranging from one-man businesses to global enterprises, and discovered a few common threads in what makes for compelling web content.

1. They speak to a focused niche. I like ice cream. Do you like ice cream? Great! But I’m not basing my business around selling ice cream, so this may well be the only time I ever mention it here. (FYI: the strawberry balsamic from Gelato Fiasco is divine.) The best corporate and small business blogs I’ve seen take a broad issue and discuss the ins-and-outs of it, rather than treating their blogs as personal journals. Take Intuit’s Small Business Blog for example: The company’s accounting software products are aimed at small business owners, and the blog provides tons of useful tips and insights on all aspects of entrepreneurship. (Disclosure: I write for it, but I’d read it even if I didn’t.)
2. They provide useful advice. Providing value to others is a key component of all types of content marketing. That doesn’t always mean attracting customers; many great blogs offer advice and insight for others in the same profession, such as my colleague Susan Johnston’s wonderful Urban Muse blog for freelance writers. It’s about putting the sales pitch on hold and focusing on helping others for free. When you do that, people will take notice and look to you as an industry expert. That can lead to referrals from colleagues, and work inquiries from prospects.
3. They stay on top of the news. If you’re focused on a narrow industry, it’s worth your while to stay on top of what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. Write about hot topics like Facebook’s IPO or the Komen Foundation’s funding misstep, thinking about what the news means for your industry or how the story can serve as a case study of a larger issue. In addition to coming across as relevant and insightful, you’ll probably pick up some extra keyword traffic.
4. They offer timeless content. In addition to analyzing recent news, most compelling blogs also focus on providing evergreen advice and tutorials on topics that people will never stop searching for. The topic of overcoming writer’s block, for instance, is a timeless subject; Men with Pens, a copywriting advice site, provides great tips on dealing with this problem that will be relevant whether you read them tomorrow or five years from now.
5. They’re focused on conversation. The best business blogs aren’t about lecturing readers; they’re about communicating with them. They link, reference, and respond to other blogs on similar themes. In addition to providing advice, they accept it willingly. They’re willing to learn from commenters and take criticism in stride. Michelle Rafter’s WordCount blog for writers, for instance, offers a fantastic Q&A section for responding to reader questions and concerns.

Hawkins Multimedia’s blog is just-hatched, but we’re hoping we can create content that meets all of those criteria. Tell us, what do you admire in a business blog? I’d love to see more examples of businesses who are doing things right.

You might have even gone as far as to hire an SEO consultant to send you some buzz words to include in your blog post titles. Write them up—or hire a $5-an-article intern to do it—and you’re good to go, right?

But Google isn’t everything, and in fact, thanks to Google’s recent Panda algorithm update that weeds the low-quality content out of search results, it’s tougher than ever to get traction with keyword content alone.

If you want to use content marketing to establish your company as a major player in your industry, you need a comprehensive content strategy based on identifying your prospects’ unique needs and the best systems for delivering the information that will help them.

First, think about what your company represents. Ask yourself questions about the image you want to present to the world. For instance:

Are we a fun, flippant start-up, or a serious enterprise company?

Who are our customers? Do we want to create a family-friendly website, or focus on appealing to urban singles?

As far as format goes, would our time and money be better spent on a daily blog, or would white papers and e-books help us build authority and generate more leads from our target audience?

If you’re not sure how to answer such questions, it may be worth investing in a content development consulting company with experience creating custom publications for brands. If you’re not a writer by trade, it’s sometimes tough to take your own personal voice out of the equation as much as you should—or, conversely, to give your clients a glimpse of your personality when you’ve been taught that all business writing should be formal and emotionless.

Together, you can find the right tone to strike, whether that means the hip irreverancy of Groupon, the friendly, down-to-earth attitude of Hannaford, or the suit-and-tie feel of Merrill Lynch. All of these companies thought carefully about their image and messaging before implementing their corporate communications programs; even though you may not have their budgets, there’s no reason you can’t do the same.

Spending time and money on content creation before you have a strategy in place can be a waste of resources. Take the time to focus on the broader picture before you begin filling in the details, and you’ll be doing more than creating articles—you’ll be building a brand.