What is Content Marketing, and why is it so effective at reaching and keeping an audience connected with a brand?
First, what content are we talking about in this method? Content can take many forms:
- Web pages
- Blog posts
- Social media posts or tweets
- Images
- Videos
- Audio such as a podcast
- White Papers
- Infographics
- Channels or collections of any of the above.
With these in mind, Content Marketing is a strategy with tactics that drive traffic to sites and social media by publishing content on a regular basis. Social media is a topic unto itself, but it should be clear that content and social go hand-in-hand. Together they are one-two punch where you publish material for a niche audience, and build dialog with them consistently.
What content marketing is not
The purpose of any such content is NOT to advertise or self-promote, at least not directly. A marketing video or commercial does not make up part of a content marketing campaign. Instead of pitching your prospects a product or service, you are creating an audience for content that appeals to their need for information, entertainment and expert education.
An example of what Content Marketing is not, is “creating a viral video.” Content can go viral, but it can’t be made to go viral and 99.99% of the time this is completely out of the control of the small to medium business. There is an ephemeral, voodoo nature as to why content goes viral, and the Fortune 100 have thrown millions at this effort, only to fail, scratching their heads.
Content Marketing Strategy
The strategy behind a content marketing effort should, in its purest form, be about providing real, informative or entertaining material that visitors will really want to experience regularly. Two solid approaches are A) sharing expertise on a niche subject, and B) creating entertaining serial niche content.
It’s paramount to establish a niche, and dig into that niche strongly with detailed expertise. This begs for research to discover a hole to fill in the topical conversation that few are talking about. One should cover the basics, but also determine what questions haven’t been asked or answered. Don’t be afraid to put questions out there in your field and create a dialog with commenters.
It’s also critical to maintain a regular presence in the marketplace, so that your brand is consistently associated with the quality of content you publish. Thought leadership is not as simple as creating one great piece demonstrating command of a topic. Leadership requires a longer term commitment. Study what others are posting about in your space, curate links and form relationships with other bloggers where possible. Always give credit where credit is due.
A holistic content marketing strategy will consider the following steps:
- Researching online communities – you don’t necessarily need to be everywhere. For example, a B2B will be concentrated differently than B2C.
- Researching existing/competitve content, its keywords/tags, multimedia, infographics, etc. Who are the players in your space, and what are their tactics? Look for ideas there, but also look closely for ways to be different and provide more value.
- Understanding your demographics: who are they, where and why do they engage online? Determine how to add value for that audience.
- Consider the different forms your content can take (see above list). Do you have the ability to create high quality images, write a white paper, write a script, shoot & edit videos, etc.? Do have time on a regular basis? If you’re already bookmarking what interests you, then at the very least you’re already curating content that others may find valuable collected in one place (i.e. your blog).
- Consider how your content can be adapted on the shortest attention span platforms (twitter). Consider how you can create shareable content (with viral potential).
- Understand how often your audience engages with content. How much do visitors share, comment or ‘favorite’ content?
- Determine a timetable for content publishing to various destinations. There’s a sweet spot for posting content often enough but not spamming your audience either. There are times of day and days of the week ideal for posts on each social network. It’s a rapidly evolving landscape that demands regular research and stats to make the best choices.
- Consider whether you need help to consistently create content at a high level of quality. Determine a reasonable budget that you can maintain monthly.
Summary
Content marketing with social media is relatively new, but is maturing quickly into one of the most powerful strategies a business can employ to reach an audience.
While there is a lot to absorb at today’s rate of change, don’t fall prey to over-analysis paralysis. Our advice is to begin today, start small and grow steadily, get help where you need it, and be consistent with your efforts to grow your business.
