case study: 33% growth in one year

Blog content—especially newsblogging (covering news developments in your field)—is an important tool for building audiences from which customers, collaborators, and media contacts can be developed.

Here, a look at one of orobora’s best clients.

Childhood Obesity News

Dr. Robert Pretlow is a respected medical doctor, engineer, and researcher focused on childhood obesity. His “W8Loss2Go” app, designed to help obese children lose weight, has been in development for several years. His paper, “Treatment of child/adolescent obesity using the addiction model: A smartphone app pilot study,” was recently accepted for publication in the prestigious scientific journal, Childhood Obesity, under the editorial leadership of Dr. David L. Katz of Yale University and other leading investigators.

Dr. Pretlow connected with us in 2010. He had a successful website for overweight kids, Weigh2Rock, but nothing geared toward sharing his research with doctors, nurses, medical service providers, homecare providers, researchers, scientists, application developers, parents, and other adults interested in the science of weight loss.

Newsblogging Anchors a Content Campaign

Our first and highest recommendation was to create a daily newsblog covering any breaking news in his field. This would help us to cultivate an audience and build a forum where we could add news about Dr. Pretlow’s work from time to time. Childhood Obesity News, Dr. Pretlow’s newsblog, has generated these results:

• original, copyrighted news coverage on topics his target audience is keenly interested in;
• images or multimedia in every post that add visual appeal and are copyright-compliant;
• keyword-rich blog posts that improve search engine rank and visibility;
• name recognition that grows with leading journalists and thought leaders; and
• results that grow as content builds, with posts pulling prospects years after they’re published.

Our lead journalist for the blog, Pat Hartman, the former editor of SALON and a former nurse, has been diligent in covering every aspect of childhood obesity for over five years. Her posts, and the posts of other writers for the blog—including Dr. Pretlow—go through content editing, proofreading, fact-checking, link-checking, and search optimization before they hit the blog.

This team approach to content creation—a client who is a thought leader generating news, a lead journalist covering the news, and editors suggesting stories, shaping content, formatting content for visual appeal, and delivering content across a network of outlets—has at times outperformed First Lady Michelle Obama’s well-funded, well-staffed “Let’s Move” team!

Results of a Sustained Content Campaign

Five years in, we’re seeing continual upward growth in terms of:

• unique visitors to the site;
• social shares across social media; and
• media invitations and scholarly connection.

Here are some highlights from Dr. Pretlow’s latest tracking report:

• Average monthly visitors to Childhood Obesity News increased 33% in 2014—just the latest in a string of years with over 15% growth in traffic
• The site’s best-performing posts (those with the most unique visitors) were also some of the oldest. In fact, 80% of traffic to the overall site was thanks to content developed prior to 2014. Some of these posts draw more traffic today than when they were originally published. Newsblogging is an investment that gains value over time, not an expense.
• One post, shared by a reader on Reddit, resulted in 4x the normal traffic over a one-week period. Newsblogging feeds social networking by providing “newsy tweets.”

Timely, original news coverage leads to increased traffic, followers, and search rank—now and in the future.

Dr. Pretlow realizes four major benefits from his newsblogging efforts:

• increase in the number of inquiries about participation in app studies;
• increase in the sales of his book Overweight: What Kids Say;
• increase in the number of media solicitations requesting he share his expertise, including the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Austria; and
• improved search engine rank for terms such as “childhood obesity news” (#2 at Google) and “obesity news” (#15 at Google).

Investment in Quality Content = Increasing Rewards

The majority of “top 10” posts on Dr. Pretlow’s site last year were published prior to 2014. This demonstrates how an investment in content now continues to pay dividends for years to come.

Ready-made social media material
Dr. Pretlow enjoys sharing obesity-related news on his social media accounts, especially @ObesityBlog on Twitter. As a time-constrained doctor and researcher he appreciates that his blog provides daily social media material, too.

Ownership of blog posts
Dr. Pretlow retains all ownership of blog posts. He can incorporate any of the material into other informational products or reuse it however he wishes. He can assemble posts on similar topics into whitepapers, slideshows, and even ebooks.

Construction of lasting reputation
Dr. Pretlow’s posts perform well in part because there is such a library of referenced material. Each post includes at least two external references. These connect his blog with other news-makers in the field. The result is that media outlets are very familiar with Dr. Pretlow’s blog and frequently invite him to comment when childhood obesity bursts into the news.

Timely conversations and connections
Last year’s blog series on Coca-Cola—the corporation’s influence, questionable obesity research funding, and arguably addictive product are just highlights —put Dr. Pretlow on the radar of pro-Coke and anti-Coke news media. This provided extra access to important media outlets and a conduit for research shared by others.

Added media exposure
Dr. Pretlow’s high-ranking blog has spurred invitations to numerous media opportunities without additional effort on his part. This includes but is not limited to television interviews, an appearance in a documentary film, and invitations to present at major conferences worldwide.

If your content marketing could use a little orobora, contact us today with an idea of what you want to accomplish. We’ll contact you tomorrow with a plan to make it happen.