Jun 06, 2012

Case Study

Content Marketing: Mindjet’s infographic strategy boosts blog traffic 420%, Facebook views 313.4%

SUMMARY: Content marketing involves creating compelling content that your prospects and customers will want to engage with and share. One stage in the overall process is tailoring each content piece to fit different distribution channels. Long-form blog posts must be reconfigured for Facebook, and then compressed even further for channels such as Twitter and StumbleUpon.

This case study looks at a B2B software company that developed a content marketing strategy heavily reliant on infographics. The company repurposed its content across multiple channels, and used calls-to-action to both improve traffic to the corporate blog and increase its Facebook views and interactions.

by David Kirkpatrick, Reporter

CHALLENGE

A content marketing strategy is worthless if your prospects and customers do not find and engage with that content. Like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it, an unread blog post, or tweet that gets lost in the ongoing stream of Twitter updates, is not improving your marketing efforts.

Mindjet, a collaborative work management software company best known for its mind-mapping software, created a content strategy that combined different content platforms. It repurposes every content piece to fit each different distribution source: company blog, Facebook and Twitter.

In this strategy, Mindjet utilized infographics as their major type of content.

"The kind of content which has turned out to be not only ‘snackable’ but also sharable is infographics on a wide variety of subjects," said Parker Trewin, director of global communications, Mindjet.

He added, "These infographics are perfect for us because they are very visual and serve as a visual complement to our product which is very visual in nature."

This case study looks at Mindjet’s overall content strategy, and details how the company creates and utilizes infographics across that strategy, increasing blog readership and Facebook engagement in the process.

CAMPAIGN

Trewin stated that Mindjet’s business referrals come from more than just its content strategy.

He listed the top four referral sources:

Company website

StumbleUpon

Company blog

Facebook

Mindjet’s four main content outlets for distribution are the blog, Facebook, StumbleUpon and Twitter.

Step #1. Create platform-appropriate and sharable content

"Our content strategy from the highest level is to make sure that it (the content) is engaging, to make sure that it is easily digestible or snackable, and to provide different forms for people to engage in different ways," explained Trewin.

He said the goal is to create content that is easily shared, along with making sure it is appropriate for the distribution point.

Making the content appropriate means ensuring it is presented in a manner best suited for each of its channels. For example, not using long-form text that might be found on the blog for a Facebook update, and not using 140 characters (a tweet) on the blog.

In another example, the team would present its infographic on Facebook to take advantage of the visual element of that platform, and then use it as part of a longer, more text-heavy blog post.

Mindjet uses StumbleUpon to create virality around the content piece, and engages Twitter to stimulate comments, broadcast the infographic and provide information about all of the content channels.

Creating and distributing the infographics

Trewin said the content strategy, particularly around the infographics, is reviewed on a quarterly basis and includes a number of elements:

Find something interesting to the target audience that ties back to Mindjet’s business

The idea must offer the opportunity for visual representation

The idea must offer the ability to create a series of related content pieces

The content series must have a sense of voice and design

With a plan in place, the marketing team produces an infographic and rolls that out with three basic steps.

Day one introduces the content on the Facebook page, where the audience can comment and make suggestions about the infographic.

Day two is a blog post that elaborates on the infographics with additional text and commentary.

Day three includes an additional infographic that includes suggestions from the Facebook commentary.

Make the infographic sharable

Facebook is an obvious, and relatively easy, platform to encourage sharing of the content. Both StumbleUpon and Twitter are two other distribution points that make sharing simple for Mindjet’s audience.

To facilitate infographic sharing on the blog, Mindjet provides a cut-and-paste embed code on the post so visitors can share the content on their own websites. Trewin said one way the marketing team makes that share searchable is by adding keywords to the embed code.

Step #2. Begin with the blog

Although posting to the blog is day two of an infographic campaign, the entire content marketing strategy involves more than just infographics and revolves around the company blog.

Trewin stated the concept behind the company blog was to serve more as a news magazine to give its community informative and educational content. He added the company hired a brand journalist who is dedicated solely to producing blog content.

Along with the brand journalist, other internal contributors as well as external guest bloggers provide content.

Step #3. Optimize the Facebook newsfeed

Trewin said Mindjet uses Facebook for its visual content and as an avenue to present information and spur a conversation about that content.

The goal is to present easy-to-digest and consistent content on Facebook, and optimize the process to encourage engagement.

"We are making sure that we are not only putting the right kind of content out, but we are putting the content out at the right time so that our fans will have the best opportunity to enjoy and share that content," said Trewin.

He said by optimizing its Facebook newsfeed, Mindjet drives more traffic to the blog.

Mindjet also uses Facebook to pose questions for its audience to help spur conversation and engagement.

Step #4. Include calls-to-action in the content

While creating interesting content and getting it to the audience through many distribution channels is vital to the overall strategy, a call-to-action (CTA) should be incorporated into the content to really maximize the impact of each content piece.

Trewin offered an example of one infographic that compared "thought leaders" versus "do leaders."

The main CTA for the content piece was a request to share the infographic.

On Facebook, Marketing added a higher-friction CTA. Facebook fans were asked to tag friends, influencers or personalities they thought fit into one of the two categories of the infographic.

Trewin said one benefit of this CTA is if a Facebook fan tagged one of their friends, that friend wouldreceive a notification he or she was tagged at the Mindjet Facebook page. He added people who responded to that CTA were demonstrating how valuable they found that particular content piece.

RESULTS

Back to the "thinkers versus doers" infographic, that Facebook content piece and its high-friction CTA resulted in:

317 shares

432 "likes"

113 comments

122 tags

23.9% engagement from Mindjet’s Facebook fans on the day the infographic was released

3,264 views

313.4% increase in average daily views over the previous 20 days

The content strategy has also impacted blog performance. Trewin said a strong blog post would receive between 700 and 1,000 views, but the first infographic garnered 13,127 unique page views.

Before the new content strategy went into practice, the blog typically received between 17,000 and 20,000 unique visitors, but this past April unique page views topped 84,000 -- an increase of 420%.

Trewin stated his main takeaway from the new content strategy was the importance of bringing art and science together. The art in creating engaging content, and the science in getting content to the audience when it is most likely to be seen and engaged with.

"It goes back to the art and the science coming together," he explained. "To know there is no substitute for creativity. There is no substitute for design. People appreciate that, and there is no substitute for understanding the science behind the channel that you are interacting with."

Creative Samples

Infographic

Follow-up infographic

Company blog

Facebook page

Sources

Mindjet

BrandGlue -- Mindjet’s Facebook newsfeed optimization vendor

JESS3 -- Mindjet’s infographic vendor

Related Resources

Content Marketing: How to measure results, find gaps and grab opportunities

Marketing How-to: 6 content marketing lessons learned from a B2B IT company

Marketing: Analytics drive relevant content, 26,000 new monthly visits to blog

Marketing Research in Action: Content marketing data

Content Marketing: Should you lure a journalist over to the "dark side?"

Comments about this Case Study

Jun 06, 2012 - Dara Schulenberg of Designs Marketing says:
Where's the ROI? Views and shares are great - but soft - metrics. Show us how this impacts the cost to acquire a prospect, delivers more sales-ready leads than other channels or somehow serves a customer support or loyalty program! I expect more from a highlighted case study MarketingSherpa!

Jun 06, 2012 - Zach Welch of BrandGlue says:
A great question. This is where I feel many marketers go wrong. They want to see hard value ROI in terms of dollars. But there is certainly a high ROI for MindJet. First of all, MindJet is a B2B and not a consumer brand. Second, people don't go on Facebook to buy things, they go on there to interact with their friends and family, so as a brand you have to be an extension of that. The goal at MindJet is to provide great content that people like to consume. Facebook is a customer retention tool, not a customer acquisition tool. This is why many large retailers such as J.C. Penny's took down their social retail applications.

Jun 06, 2012 - Dara Schulenberg of Designs Marketing says:
Zach - thanks for responding. Respectfully, I do think ROI is a requirement if you expect to manage c-suite support (including funding) for social business methodologies. And, as a consumer of said valuable content I have to believe those more concrete metrics exist (but were omitted from the case study). I am not sure I understand your reference to MindJet as a B2B vs B2C. Can you expand how that changes the KPIs? Agree that FB excels as a retention and CEX platform and that the commerce side is not yet mature. But, I do think FB can be a customer acquisition tool - if that is the objective.

Jun 14, 2012 - Parker Trewin of Mindjet says:
Dara, thanks for your comments. I think you hit the nail on the head. Our goals weren't outright customer acquisition but instead audience retention and brand engagement. Our CTAs aren't "buy more Mindjet" but "read more" thus our goal is to have fans and subscribers progressively engage in more communications ultimately ending up with more hits to the website-- which tangibly drives more sales. To that end our blog is the fifth leading referral to the site. Facebook is sixth. The growth in referrals to the website since January has been tremendous. The blog has seen an 11.4X increase and Facebook has seen a 14.1X increase.

Sep 05, 2012 - Mike Hammons of Infinity Info Systems says:
Ok, so the CTA was "audience retention and brand engagement"..so what. If it does not result in a measurable increase in sales it doesn't mean much. Fantastic, you have created a lot of great content that people seem to like to read and share. Big deal. Are you in the business of content creation just for the fun of it? I think your CEO and shareholders would say no. I have to disagree a bit with Zach...to me the mistake many marketers make is they have too little focus on hard returns. They like the touchy/feely of "likes", page views, blog and twitter posts (and follows). I have to agree with Dara. More "likes", shares, comments and page views don't mean much if there is no corresponding increase in sales or return on investment. Just because more people may have been exposited to the Mindjet brand or "consumed more of your content or "engaged") it doesn't ultimately mean anything if it doesn't increase sales, leads, upgrades, new business, etc. If there is no return, then those are fairly meaningless measurements. I could have a million likes but if it doesn't add $1 to the bottom line it's just that...they like me!...they really like me!

Oct 24, 2012 - Martin Armstrong of SEO says:
User engagement can be boosted when you are good in your blogging strategy. Create more interesting content and make sure to share them on social media websites. Believe me this is truly helpful.

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