TopRank Marketing has been tapping into our own online community, and connecting with influencers for a long time. Based on this experience, we have prepared a guide that outlines the five keys to success for participation marketing for those of you that want to add more participation to your content marketing.

1. Five Keys to Success for
Participation Marketing

2. Content is King and Kingdom, So What is Next?
As companies improve their ability to connect directly with audiences through
story-rich content, consumers expect more from brands. Informed buyers
want richer content experiences and to become a part of the story itself.
Smart marketers are shifting their focus from brand storytelling to inspiring
brandividuals to participate in creating stories themselves – content that is
meaningful for the brand, contributors and the community.
To achieve a competitive content advantage, companies must connect and
co-create content experiences with their audiences in meaningful ways. Doing
so will inspire even more content participation, audience engagement and
advocacy - a clear path to content domination.
Participation in Marketing is the democratization of content creation and
promotion by co-creating content with subject matter experts, influencers and
your community.
More than UGC (user generated content) or crowdsourcing, organized
content participation and co-creation invests experts in the success of your
marketing and your business. To increase the quantity of quality content for
marketing, increased content participation is the key.
In this guide you will find advice from TopRank Marketing’s experts, tips
from major brand marketers and the answers to some of our community’s
most burning questions about participation marketing.
“If You Want Your Content to Be Great,
Ask Your Community to Participate!”

3. 5 Keys to Success for
Participation Marketing
There is No “I” in Content
Benefits of Content Participation:
• Authenticity - The content
contributions come from “real”
people
• Quality - Expertise outside of
marketing departments becomes
more available
• Engagement - The act of
collaboration creates an experience
and can facilitate relationships
• Scale - Distributing content creation
across contributors outside of the
marketing department can increase
overall quality content production
Story Planning
Activate Content
Participants
Co-Create Content
Amplify Content
Performance
Optimization

4. The intersection of what buyers want and what sellers are offering
is the sweet spot for storytelling with content. Understanding the
unique selling proposition for the brand and how that story will be
told through content collaboration is an essential first step for
participation marketing.
It is not enough to simply document brand marketing goals, but to
also understand the goals of participants and the audience you
wish to sell to.
Planning effective participation marketing programs includes
narratives that support customer information needs as they move
through the sales cycle as well as how and where content
collaborators can add value.
Key story elements include:
• Empathy with the customer
• A solution to the customer’s problem
• Examples in action
• 3rd party credibility from influencers
• A clear path to next steps
Success Principle #1
Story Planning
“To successfully approach
co-creation, you must have
a plan in place before and
know what your goals are.
Ask yourself and your
team: what does success
look like after your plan is
fully in effect? ”
JASON MILLER
Senior Manager, Global
Content Marketing, LinkedIn

5. Success Principle #2
Activate Content Participants
With content marketing planning in place, the identification,
qualification and recruitment, aka, “activation” of influencers and
content creation participants is essential.
The time to begin content contributor activation is long before your
campaign needs them. Social search tools like BuzzSumo, and
Followerwonk can help research participant candidates by topic.
Who should participate with your content creation?
Potential content contributors include:
• Industry influencers
• Community members
• External subject matter experts
• Customers
• Employees
Participants can be qualified by the relevance and quality of
content they create, social reach and engagement. Activation
occurs through outreach to individuals inviting their participation.
Emphasize what’s in it for the contributor with outreach. A “give
to get” approach will result in many more “yes” responses and
more active promotion since the personal benefit for participation
will be clear.
Consumers between the
ages of 25 and 54 are the
biggest content drivers,
contributing
70%of all user generated
content (UGC).
Source: SparkReel

6. • Video Interviews
• Written Interviews
• Contests
• Surveys
• Blog Posts
• eBooks
• Webinars
• Email Campaigns
• Social Content
• Expert Resources
• Testimonials
• Case Studies
• Newsletters
• Infographics
• In-Person Events
• Virtual Conferences
• White Papers
• Guides
There are many opportunities with content marketing programs to
include contributors outside of marketing. When and where to add
co-created content to your marketing mix depends on the
information needs of your customers, resources available to
manage content creation and the message you’re trying to convey.
Content types for co-creation include:
“Any
content
created
for
marke0ng
can
be
co-­‐created.”
“Companies should offer
easy ways for their
community to create
content. It shouldn't be
over-engineered or hard
for their community to
create.”
JUSTIN LEVY
Director, Social Marketing
Citrix
Success Principle #3
Co-Create Content

7. Success Principle #4
Amplify Content
SEO and Social Media have long been effective for driving traffic
to web content and participation marketing content is no different.
By adding passionate and influential contributors to content
marketing programs, you can inspire greater distribution and
promotion of content with the incentive of self promotion.
When multiple influencers are involved in co-creating content,
there can be a multiplier effect for social shares.
When contributions to participation marketing projects are guided
by search keywords and social topics, optimization for search
engine visibility and encouraged social sharing is essentially built-
in.
Influencer participation in content can be particularly beneficial
when it comes to pitching co-created content to blogs and industry
media.
“Great
content
isn’t
great
unless
people
can
find,
consume
and
engage
with
it.”
67%of marketers say content
promotion is the primary
benefit from working with
influencers.
Source: State of Influencer
Engagement in 2015, Augure

8. Success Principle #5
Performance Optimization
Keep co-created content accountable to Attract, Engage and
Convert performance goals by monitoring KPIs and optimizing for
improved performance. Metrics to follow include:
“According to Nielsen,
content produced by
experts is the ONLY type of
content that has been
proven to exhibit a strong
lift in all areas of the
purchase cycle.”
CELIA BROWN
Senior Director of Content
Marketing, SAP
In addition to content measurement and optimization, ensure
contributor performance meets expectations by monitoring:
• Content quality
• Performance of content by contributor
• Contributor shares of co-created content
• Contributor network impact from shares
Reach
Search Visibility
Social Media Visibility
Views & Impressions
Traffic by Source
Traffic by Segment
Content Distribution
Media Placements
Blog Mentions
Brand + Affinity
Brand Sentiment
Content Consumption
Page Views
Click Through Rate
Social Network Size
Social Interactions
Content Interactions
Comments, Shares
Time on Site, Content
Paths Through Site
Form Data Captured
Newsletter Subscriptions
Demo & Trial Requests
Contact Us
Orders
• Volume
• Frequency
• Length of Sales Cycle
• Revenue Per Order

9. When it comes to inspiring community participation,
TopRank Marketing walks the talk and we recently
engaged marketers to contribute their questions about
adding participation to content. Here are the answers.
Community Q & A

10. A:
“I’m a total novice. How do I even get
started with Participation Marketing?”
The first step to add more participation to your marketing is to have a
well defined topic so you can research potential candidates that are
already active in creating content.
Connecting and collaborating with individuals who are already creating
and actively sharing content aligned with your message taps capable
content creators that are active.
Where do you find these content participants? Look for those that
are blogging, writing articles for publications, speaking at events or
active on social networks:
Once you’ve identified ideal candidates, be sure to keep it simple.
Share what’s in it for the contributor and make it easy. Start by asking
for one short tip from many contributors and the result will be a
substantial content asset with little effort from any one contributor.
• Employees
• Customers
• Partners
• Industry Influencers
• Vendors
• Up and coming freelance writers
RICK SHINN
Owner & Chief Dishwasher, Ricks Mission Coffee, LLC

11. JESSICA SNAVELY
Director, Digital Marketing, Vivint
A:
How often should you use influencers and
what technology should you use to scale?
Incorporating influencers into content marketing projects can start as
simply as an occasional blog post, eBook, infographic or webinar.
Collect data on the effectiveness of influencer collaboration with your
content projects overall as well as the performance of individual
influencers. If influencers are paid, consider those costs in your content
marketing ROI calculations.
The data and insight from performance analysis will inform your
cadence for using influencers to reach marketing goals.
Popular Influencer Marketing tools and platforms for identification,
qualification, communications and analysis include:
• Traackr
• GroupHigh
• Onalytica
• Tapinfluence
• BuzzSumo
• Augure
• ScribbleLive appinions
• Little Bird
• Followerwonk
• Markerly

12. AMANDA CHANGURIS
Senior Social Media Marketing Analyst, Highmark Health
A:
What medium is a good place to start? I
need to deliver a quick win to get buy-in
from internal leaders.
One of the quickest ways to include influencers in content is not to co-
create, but to curate a list as recognition of expertise.
Using a theme of interest to your customers, assemble quotes or tips
from content that already exists into a blog post, infographic or
SlideShare eBook.
Visual content is more engaging and is shared substantially more
than text alone, so quotes and tips should be illustrated with graphics.
Reach out to those included to let them know you’ve recognized their
expertise and use the outreach as a means to initiate a conversation
about future collaboration.
Few resources are needed to curate and relevant recognition has a
very high rate of social shares amongst influencers. This combination
can result in the quick-win performance to inspire continued
participation efforts.

13. STEVE PECK
Co-Founder, Docalytics
A:
Once you've received buy-in and content
from influencers, what is the best approach
to ensure they promote to their audiences?
Communicating expectations of content contributors from the start
provides a framework for promotion. Let influencers know that you
expect them to promote, but also give them good reason to do so.
Factors that contribute to greater (or lesser) influencer content
promotion include:
• Relevance to the influencers’ interests and goals
• Relevance of the topic to the influencer’s community
• The quality, creativity and usefulness of the content assets
• Personalized, pre-written social messages, images, embed codes
and suggestions on how they can use the content
• Communicating before, during and after content launch with
sharing encouragement, progress metrics and resources
Providing project performance and individual feedback to participating
influencers can also inspire sharing actions with the current and future
collaboration. The key is to communicate expectations, emphasize the
personal benefit to the influencer and to make it easy.

14. Your Partner
in Content Marketing Success
TopRank Marketing is a digital marketing agency that helps Fortune
1000 companies improve brand visibility, grow communities and
increase sales online. Our team of marketing professionals are masters
at planning, implementing and optimizing integrated online marketing
programs for some of the top B2B and B2C brands in the world.
If you would like to discuss a strategic content marketing program that’s
optimized, socialized, influencer activated and co-created, then give us
a call!
Contact Us Today
TopRankMarketing.com
winning@toprankmarketing.com
1-877-872-6628