2014 is being touted as the year that content marketing turns big. What can you do to create and market content?
Newspapers, magazines, film-makers, publishing houses…now brands can be content creators too. With technology making it easier than ever before to source, present, and find relevant information, SME brands are viewing content marketing as a key tool to attract and engage their audience, and earn better recall.
How can your brand get started with content marketing? Here are a few tips to help.
- Spot the niche. What is your brand’s promise? What is its area of expertise? Translate this expertise into content that can be easily shared and create a distinct identity for your brand.
Food products giant Kraft shares recipes and cooking aids, Pampers addresses the concerns of expecting and new mothers, and Canon offers photography tips.
- Offer value. Why should the audience visit your blog? Or watch your videos? Apart from quality, what’s in it for them? Give your audience that moment to laugh. Make them feel good. Help them learn something new. Share insights like beauty brand Dove did. Their recent experiment was a gentle reminder to women to appreciate their natural beauty.
- Think idea, not platform. Get your brand’s core content ideas right and then think of which platform to use for broadcasting them. Often brands set platform-specific goals (I want a Facebook campaign) before establishing broader content goals and strategies. This can lead to many challenges, including how to sustain content creation. Don’t let the media matter more than the message.
Apple’s focus on innovation, simplicity and aesthetics, have been echoed across their communication material – from product literature to advertisements. 30 years of Mac is another example of how they all come together online.
- Sustain. Content-driven marketing needs consistent effort over a period to deliver results. Starting off is easy but keeping the pace steady is a challenge. One of the simplest ways to tackle this is to link content generation and dissemination with your/ a key team member’s roles and responsibilities. Assign the task to someone: it could be your self.
- Market the content. Creating great content is only half the job. Making it easy for your audience to discover, consume and share it is the other half. Plan how to take your messages to your target audience – think of media platforms, think how to re-purpose the messages and ensure you get the eyeballs and page visits you are looking for.
