Content marketing

50% DRAFT (revised by Ashley Dotterweich on Sept 1, 2020)

The goal of Mattermost’s content marketing strategy is to connect our audience’s priorities to our brand and the future of their industries through story. In H2 2020, we’re focused on building and executing a strong foundation of content marketing best practices and building out a pipeline of content initiatives around the key topics for a few target audiences.

What are our goals?

For H2 2020, our content marketing goals are as follows:

• Publishing six customer stories (case studies, logos, blog interview, webinars) by end of H2 2020.

• Individual content initiatives are 60% increasing our audience, 20% advancing prospects through pipeline, and 20% enabling sales and champions, and every content initiative has a clearly documented and executed distribution plan.

• Our Editorial calendar is set at least two weeks out on a rolling basis.

• Every member of the company understands how they can get involved in developing and promoting Mattermost content.

Key resources

• Content V2MOM (or see chart below)

• Mattermost Product Differentiation Strategy

• Audiences

• Content Themes

• Editorial Calendar

• Mattermost Style Guide

• Content Development & Distribution Workflow

Content V2MOM

	Content V2MOM
Vision	Connect our audience’s priorities to our brand and the future of their industries through story.
Values	Audience Obsessed, High Standards, Balancing Short- and Long-term Growth
Methods	Execute on content calendar and distribution process that focuses on high impact themes and topics Develop and iterate on contributor, customer, and partner content programs * Uplevel SEO practices and site UX to improve content relevance and stickiness
Obstacles	Alignment with product roadmap Misunderstanding audience needs Not focusing on high impact partner and customer stories Neglecting SEO groundwork
Metrics	Publish and promote 6 case studies in H2 Content programs are documented, socialized, and vacation-ready * 80% of the time the field has the content they need

Content team

• Ashley Dotterweich: Head of Content

• Jason Blais: Lead Product Manager (Community)

• Justin Reynolds: Copywriter

Content neetings and channels

Want to join these meetings/channels or learn more about them? Ping Ashley.

Content strategy meeting

Meets monthly on the first week of the month to discuss: Previous month’s content performance; How well we’re aligning to priorities/percentages outlined; Upcoming content for next 1-2 months.

Biweekly blog review

Meets every other week to discuss: Inbound content ideas and ongoing content projects for R&D team and community.

Mattermost content channels

• #Content-Coordination: Channel for preparing individual content pieces and campaigns for launch.

• #Content-Strategy: Channel for discussing high-level content strategy at Mattermost.

• #Marketing: General marketing channel for all other marketing requests.

Audiences

Understanding who our audience is and what they care about provides the foundation upon which we’ll create all collateral, campaigns, and content initiatives. We kicked things off by building out a framework of audience definitions.

In H2, we’re focused on DevOps practitioners, Incident Response Managers, and Admins. We know that these technical stakeholders are often the entry point into new organizations, and play a significant role in evaluating and adopting new tools. Focusing on these audience segments will allow us to help develop a healthy demand gen pipeline.

Content themes

There are many, many topics we can create content for, but we are a small team with limited resources. As such, the majority of our content initiatives will focus on developing content around three categories as they relate to our audiences. See extended positioning statements.

Open Source (Admins, Buyers, DevOps Practitioners)

Position: Leveraging open source provides a competitive advantage for enterprises.

DevOps (DevOps Practitioners, Incident Response Managers, Admins in enterprise)

Position: Teams need collaboration infrastructure that connects the people and the tools they need to effectively practice DevOps.

Future of Remote Work (DevOps Practitioners, Non-technical users, Incident Response Managers, Admins, Buyers)

Position: As more teams go remote, they need software solutions that enable secure, private collaboration experiences.

These topics/themes will manifest differently at different stages in the buyer journey.

Content development and distribution priorities

Goal	Measures	Audience	Content Types and Format	Themes	Distribution Tactics
Increase audience (60%)	Site traffic</br> Referral traffic and organic traffic	Mostly developers (DevOps practitioners, Incident Response Managers)	Non-technical and technical tips and tricks</br> How we solved internal problems</br> * Blog posts/articles, video how-tos, podcasts	What are the interesting open source projects happening at Mattermost? In the communities that we’re a part of, the verticals that we’re selling into?</br> What we’re doing to streamline DevOps at Mattermost? How is DevOps changing right now?</br> * How do I solve specific challenges in moving or managing my remote team?	SEO (Site-wide and optimization for specific posts)</br> Offsite linking and publishing (Reddit, opensource.com, HN)</br> * Partner marketing
Advancing audience through funnel (20%)	Number of engagements with content</br> Engagement with newsletter and nurture campaigns</br> * Conversions to conversations with sales	Developers and Admins	How-to guides</br> Deep dives into customer use cases</br> * Thought leadership * Product tips and tricks documentation * Blog posts, documentation, video/webinars and office hours, case studies	Why is an open source platform a good idea for businesses?</br> What resources do DevOps teams need to improve processes?</br> * What does remote culture look like in 2020? What direction is it headed?	Cross-linking between content</br> Email nurture campaigns</br> * Monthly newsletter * Social media
Enable sales and internal champions with strategic collateral (20%)	Number and effectiveness of case studies (How many times was a case study used and effective?)</br> Engagement with content campaigns for late-stage prospects (TBD)	Admins, buyers	Case studies and vertical-specific use case collateral, ROI docs</br> Data sheets, slide decks, case studies	Mattermost as the best open source alternative</br> How Mattermost helps streamline DevOps workflow and processes</br> * How Mattermost helps provide secure, private remote experiences	Cross-linking between content</br> Email newsletter</br> * Sales collateral (slides, data sheets, case studies)