After recently meeting with several of our clients and discussing their channel marketing activities, I discovered one significant trend – a lack of online content. Although vendors would like to drive effective messages down a channel, their content wells tend to run on the dry side.
First off, what is Content Marketing? According to the Content Marketing Institute , “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
But let’s start from scratch, what is content ? Although there exists a handful of definitions, for the purpose of this post I will refer to content as “the principal substance offered by a World Wide Web site” (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary).
The key here is the word “substance”, we’ll dive into further detail later on.
Thanks to the internet, consumers are now at the center of the universe. Therefore, powerful content, no matter where it is distributed in a channel, is key to attracting inbound traffic and improving search engine optimization (SEO). However, some companies big and small, feel intimidated when it comes to content creation.
Can you blame them? As a marketer, creating content intimidates me a little too. Social Media posts, blog posts, news releases, whitepapers, eBooks, webpages, where do you even begin to start? Without a doubt, it’s becoming an increasingly difficult task to burden, yet creating strong content is essential to remaining relevant.
Here are several tips to consider when facing your content challenges:
1. Refer back to the Content Marketing definition . Content creation comes more easily if you know who it’s meant for. Many marketers advocate creating Buyer Personas/Profiles. I’d agree, content creation will come much easier if you know which topics interest your intended audience. Ask your best customers about the challenges they face and the strategies they employ.
2. Curate content. Most marketers agree that up to 80 percent of your content should be curated. The other 20 percent being original content created in-house. Note, the ratio is subject to change depending on your organization’s capabilities. Scoop.it! is a free content curation site that’s worth checking out.
3. Content creation is a team sport. Motivate everyone within your organization to get involved with content creation, especially blog posts. Each person in an organization harbors unique knowledge – tap into it! Try offering incentives to members outside of the marketing department to contribute ideas and draft posts.
4. Create a consistent schedule for publishing content. It doesn’t matter whether you’re posting twice a week or twice a month, make sure it’s consistent so that your audience knows how often to expect it. To help create consistency with publishing, (particularly on Social Media) there are some tools available ( MioDatos , for example). MioDatos is perfect for publishing synchronized content to your entire indirect channel.
5. Finally, keep content substantial and authentic . In regards to SEO, content is more important than ever. For those who still believe that page ranking depends on keyword stuffing and exaggerated link building, check out this article titled “ Google Wants Content: How To Adjust Your SEO Strategy ”.
Once you start creating sufficient content, distribute it to channel partners to reach a larger audience, generate more inbound traffic, and create infinite expressions.
Thanks for reading. Please include additional advice in the Comments box below, or share any thoughts on content marketing.
About the Author:
Jesse Ignell contributes to the Content Marketing team at Computer Market Research. He also manages Media Relations for the company.
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