WORKWEEK

The first 30-60-90 days of your job as a new content marketer at any company are crucial. Or, if you are a hiring manger for a content marketer at a company, what you set out as someone’s first 30-60-90 days is crucial. 

It can be hard to know where to start though. Never fear, Tracey is here! 

Here is how I’d set up a 30-60-90 if you could follow the human-centered design approach.

First 30 days:

• Onboard with the company.
  • Target market
  • Roadmap
  • Customers 
  • Investors
  • Marketing strategy 
• Begin target audience interviews:
  • Interview 30-50 [target audience members] to understand where they get their information, which sources they trust, their biggest pain points, etc.
    • This will build the early foundation of a larger content strategy. [This is based on human-centered design best practices. Document here––i.e. An example from my PartyRound assignment that I shared last week––on how that would work. Word of warning…it is long].
• Begin collecting a list of all terms that are new to you that folks in the target market use. You can use this to create an internal glossary, learn the language of the customer, and even turn it into a glossary in general that you can publish forward facing as a good first piece of content.
  • Example here. Though, honestly, MailChimp’s is my favorite. Gotta give competitors credit where it’s due!  

First 60 days: 

• Finalize human centered design interviews and content competitive analysis. 
• Put together editorial guidelines based on what we’ve learned
• Submit design / UX needs for a content hub and begin working with development.
• Finalize glossary terms, and begin writing short descriptions for all. 
• Determine UX for glossary (if different from the content hub itself) and begin dev work if required. 
• Begin case study interviews

First 90 days: 

• Finalize the phase 1 of the glossary, and launch with a larger go-to-market plan.
• Begin publishing case studies.
• Socialize content calendar based on what we’ve learned through the interviews and topics the content hub should cover
• Begin publishing content! 

**The glossary can be scrapped entirely, and replaced with publishing case studies earlier on, as needed for the organization. 

***If you do go the glossary route, think about interlinking early on. There are Wordpress plugins that can help so that as you write content over time, it is automatically interlinking abc to glossary keywords. 

****Glossaries are particularly helpful for entrepreneur audiences––but if your audience is more mid-market, don’t let that deter you. Oracle and others publish glossaries, too! 

Remember, start small here. You want (or you want your content marketers) to understand the target audience and the company’s POV before publishing blog content––because that POV and positioning will determine long-term success. Sure, you’ll learn more the longer you’re at the company, but publishing content without a basis of understanding for the product and the market creates boring content on the internet, and we have far too much of that already. 

Stand out, folks! Start with interviews. Move to case studies. Learn what your audience reads and wants, the problems they are trying to solve, and then build content for them––and optimize for SEO after that.