Content Strategy, Creative Direction + SEO

Planted

Being a mission-driven B-Corp means going above and beyond as a business. You need people to buy into the brand, not just buy from it (though that’s always nice). Being a startup in a sea of competitors and copycats means you have to be lean and commercial and build ESoV with fewer resources. We relaunched our blog to target brand building and SEO presence in equal measure.

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The why

When we set out to increase organic traffic, it was for multiple reasons: staying true to our mission to inspire the planet to eat more plants; to increase our share of voice by creating a lifestyle resource in a white space untouched by competitors; increase SEO and build domain authority; capture leads and create more diverse purchase flows.

Logo design: Stephanie Johnstone

The how

Partnering across the business to rebuild and brand the blog (back then essentially a mid-2000s Tumblr with none of the functionality), I wrote a content strategy with Growth Marketing; hired and trained content writers to my team who systematically targeted keywords; briefed brand-led editorial content; mapped organic journeys and designed an onboarding flow.

I worked closely with Product and Engineering to define a roadmap and prioritise features. We added search, navigation, tagging, collections and series pages, blog homepage, author pages and lead capture.

Initial scamps | Design: Rach Fingleton

Navigation | Design: Adeline Marchal

Series page | Design: Rach Fingleton / Adeline Marchal

Email onboarding flow | Design: Rach Fingleton

The what

Over the course of 18 months we 10x organic traffic, with the most significant gains in search (16x).

We developed a diverse creative response, which included quick answer SEO, SEO whitepapers, keyword targeted recipe content, social lead capture competitions, multiple content series based off audience insights, stand-alone thought pieces, and a dedicated editorial newsletter with its own onboarding flow. To say I am proud of my team is an understatement.

Photography: Val Concordia

Content series:
How to replace meat in everything

In the west, most of us are familiar enough with cooking meat that opening a recipe book is an added extra at the end of a long day. However, our instinct with veggies is to steam or boil them and that gets bland very quickly.

How to replace meat in everything is a rallying cry to give veggies a fighting chance in the kitchen. In essence treat them like meat and you can’t go far wrong.

I briefed Val to create a wonderful world of recipes for rubs, marinades, deep frying, searing and roasting – processes usually reserved for meat, but used on veg. We chose a hard light photography style to suit the category codes normally associated with gastro-style meat heavy food photography.

Photography + recipes: Val Concordia

SEO targeted articles and recipes

A large part of the Planted strategy focused on SEO opportunities. Topics ranged from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s diet, to whether silk is vegan to guides for the best accidentally vegan sweets and biscuits to be found in UK supermarkets.

With recipes we made it our mission to veganise as many key words as possible, from our Vegan Yorkshire Puddings recipe which trends year round, to Sticky Tofu Bao.

Content series:
Veg and two veg

Ever gone into the supermarket without a plan for dinner and picked up the protein first? Of course. It’s an instinct to build a meal around the meat in a meat and two veg society.

This insight gave birth to Veg and two veg, which focused on putting a seasonal vegetable at the centre of your plate vs removing the meat and just being left with a bunch of side dishes.