Content marketing is getting your message out to your customers, It can be anything
from videos through to infographics, a blog that you're using, your website,
and it goes as far as any of the social channels that you might be using,
for example, Twitter or Facebook.
But essentially, it's getting your message out to your customers in what you want them
to hear and support about your business. Content marketing is a bit of a buzzword
for 2013, there's a lot of noise around it and a lot of marketers are looking to do this
within their strategies.
The problem is, it can be quite difficult to find information on the subject, because
there's so much out there in terms of search, if you put content marketing into
search, you'll get back nearly a hundred million
results on what you're looking for
and it will produce
reams and reams of articles on content marketers who are already doing it successfully,
infographics that are very visual but that don't necessarily tell you that much,
and lots of stats, reams of stats that tell you who are doing it this year,
but don't actually give you that much information, so it can be quite difficult to find the information
you're looking for to get started. One of the first questions that you need to ask
yourself, is what's your show and tell story? Content marketing is supposed to be fun.
It's about having a conversation.
You need to be able to show your grand vision, and tell it in such a way, that
your customers are able to retell it,
and tell it with the same gusto that you want them to get it across.
It's something that you can't cheat at, because content marketing, and also search engines
and your audiences, are too clever these days.
So, in order to prove yourself as a trusted content marketer,
you need to be a genuine source of information. The second question that
you want to ask yourself, is who are your wordsmiths? You need really good quality content
creators if you want to do content marketing properly.
These guys are going to commit you to an editorial calendar and create content for
you on a regular basis. And the more you invest in this area, the better off you'll be,
because these guys are going to give you a consistent tone of voice across all your
communications, and that's a really important point. The third question you want to ask yourself is
who is your audience? It may sound like an obvious question, but actually
it's quite surprising how many businesses are far apart from their
understanding of what their customers want.
You need to live and breath the lifestyle and know the interests if your customers.
And if you can't easily profile them in this way, then you're more likely to go
off topic and your content marketing won't be as relevant.
Or, even worse, you could get the wrong tone of voice and your customers reject you
altogether.
And the final question that you want to ask yourself, is what's your measurement of success?
Everything you do needs to be directly measurable, and what you do, you need to prove against
the bottom line,
because even sentiment within conversations can be measured these days, and you
should be doing this to prove that your story works.