The future is content – 3 tips to keeping current
Content marketing is a huge topic, so we’re going to keep this one extremely simple and pick 3 tips that should be on the top of your content marketing list.
Before we start, for those that may not know what content marketing is, we’ll try to define it as simply as possible.
Content marketing at it’s core, is developing and distributing valuable content to a defined audience, ideally an audience that meets the same criteria as your customers. The important piece of this definition is valuable content. This means it can’t be a full-time sales pitch. Your content needs to be something a potential customer would read or watch to educate themselves on a subject.
Let’s go through the top three methods of content marketing and we’ll talk about some side benefits of each. Keep in mind, the focus here is to generate great quality content that will educate your audience and keep you current for today in an ever-changing industry.
1: Blog
The concept of blogging is far from new, and it’s extremely effective. A blog can be added to any website and gives you a platform to talk about your areas of expertise. It allows you to diversify your content, so long as you actually know what you’re talking about. Your content should should be relevant to your industry and show that you are able to think critically and be as unbiased as possible in your presentation of facts. Opinions are also fine, however if you present an opinion as fact, you could land in some hot water.
As an example of diversifying your content while still being related to your industry, check out some of the other content in our blog. We are a marketing agency however, from time to time we do talk about leadership. We do have the expertise to speak on this subject to some degree as we do take leadership courses, do book studies, and work closely with the leadership in our client’s organizations.
A side benefit to blogging is that you will increase your SEO for your website. You should, to some degree, take into account the keywords you would like to increase in your search engine visibility. You can then ensure that your blogs include these keywords to some degree. Again, content first. Your keywords should not be so spammed throughout your piece that it negatively impacts the readability of the piece. Your audience should want to read your entire blog post.
2: Video
Video is such a huge component of marketing. It enables you to communicate an incredible amount of information in a layered format. By that I mean you’re able to communicate through narration, onscreen text, and images simultaneously. It enables you to create emotional connections so much easier than you can with written content. There is plenty of research to show that video captivates someones attention much faster, for much longer than text and/or static images alone. Producing great video content is an investment but, it will yield returns for you.
Most of our clients are proud of the history of their organization. A company video is often a great place to start. In business, relationships are increasingly important and we like to know who our vendors are at their core. Their mission, their vision, and their values are important to us and we understand that who we work with on the supply side matters to our customers.
A side benefit of producing video content is that when we post it to our video platform of choice, we are able to create descriptions and links back to our websites. This also helps bring more people to our websites from YouTube for example, that may otherwise have not found us. Video content can also be easily shared and published by other advertisers that you may already be using. Keep in mind that social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are best leveraged by uploading directly rather than sharing a link from YouTube or Vimeo. This will allow the video to auto-play when the video comes into view. A YouTube linked video will not do this. It’s something you definitely should do with all of the video content that you want to share.
3: Social Media
So many businesses get social media wrong. So many. So wrong. They see it as a full-time sales pitch. Social media needs to be that first and foremost. Social. Provide people with content they care about. Help them solve problems in their lives and/or businesses with tips and tools, and show them you’re real. Showcase the people around you. The ones you work with and the ones you serve. Celebrate with people.
You can still promote your products or services on social media, as long as you have other valuable content for your audience to take in. Set up landing pages on your website to direct traffic to if they want to know more about your products or services. This also allows you to track your conversion from social media channels.
A benefit here is that you can get a LOT of reach from social media for your brand. Engagement from followers can bring your content into their circles and reach customers beyond your immediate network. Use all of the social media channels that your customers may use.
You can use a lot of tools to get your content out to a huge audience. Programmatic and native advertising is a great way to get your content out to a wide, and defined audience. This works extremely well for your blogs/articles and videos. There are a lot of things to know about this, more than this blog will contain.
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