Content marketing is the creation and sharing of material that aims to create interest in a brand, product or service without explicitly promoting it.
If you’re new to content marketing, we go into what is it and how brands use it in a previous blog post.
Today, we’re looking at how brands that are already using content marketing can get more bang for their buck.
Content marketing top tips
Below are four suggestions of things you could look at to try and enhance the performance of your content marketing.
Obviously, every brand is different. So, if you need to speak to someone about how this applies to you specifically, drop Matt an email at matt@differentresonance.co.uk.
Repurpose content
Possibly the easiest way to get more from your existing content marketing is to repurpose it. And, even if you’ve already repurposed the content, there’s probably more you can get from it.
The best way to explain repurposing content is to use an example.
Imagine you have a podcast which provides invaluable insight to your ideal customer. You can take this and turn it into more content. This could be a series of clips you animate and upload to social media or it could be transcribed into a blog post for your website.
Repurposing content is about getting the most you possibly can from each piece and trying to reach your audience in different places.
Although it’s not technically repurposing, just resharing your content is important. We sometimes overestimate how interested people are in our brands.
Continuing with the podcast example, imagine if you launched a new episode and mentioned it on your social media once. People would probably miss it or forget all about it. But, if you talk about it several times over a week, it’s hard for them to ignore you.
There is, obviously, a very fine line between repurposing/resharing and being a pain in the backside. Sometimes, it’s a case of testing to discover where that line is though.
To understand how repurposing content can be applied in the real world, check out this guide by Gary Vaynerchuk.
Focus on the customer
We think the key part of the content marketing definition is the bit that says “without explicitly promoting it”.
Often, inadvertently, brands focus on what they want to say to their audience, rather than what their audience wants to hear.
One simple way to know what your audience wants is to ask them. We recommend you speak to existing clients about what would be useful to them or put a call out to your followers asking for feedback.
A word of caution here though. What people say and what people do are two different things. There’s a whole psychology lecture in this, but sometimes we inadvertently say what we think other people expect us to say rather than what we actually think.
To overcome this, another way to help you focus on what the customer wants is to utilise the data you already have. Which content has consistently performed well? Whatever that is, try and make more of it. The audience clearly likes it.
Finally, have patience. Again, this isn’t necessarily linked directly to focusing on the customer. But, it’s about avoiding the opposite, which is focusing on the brand. Without patience, you will try and rush the process and end up “explicitly promoting” your goods and services and not focusing on the customer.
Think outside the box
This is a topic Matt has written about in a previous blog post. But, to quickly summarise, thinking outside the box doesn’t have to be revolutionary. It’s why we use the term “look beyond the obvious” instead.
This is about exploring what subtle changes you could make to your content that results in an outcome greater than the original change.
If you’ve always done something one way, could you update that?
If everyone in your industry does things a certain way, can you adapt that?
These small changes can unlock new potential for your content marketing.
Connect the dots
Because the focus of content marketing is the creation and sharing of material to create interest in a brand, product or service without explicitly promoting it, you need to ensure other aspects of your marketing are doing their bit.
In the end, you still want your audience to take action and buy your product or service. And, although this might not be directly prompted by your content marketing, you need to make sure that, when they’re ready to act, it’s easy.
If most of your content is shared through one particular platform, have you checked the different routes your customer would take from that platform to where they need to be to buy your product or service?
If you have lots of different platforms, is it still clear to your audience how they can act? Is there one clear place for them to go or does each platform have its own endpoint?
By ensuring everything is working in harmony, it means that the ultimate goal of building your brand is easier to achieve and your content marketing can be allowed to do its thing.
Wrapping up
There is no formula we can follow when it comes to content marketing. The whole process is, to some extent, a case of trial and error. Some content may perform better than expected. Other content may completely flop.
The idea behind this blog post is to give you some ideas of what you could look at if you’re not quite getting the results you want.
If you’re interested in learning more about content marketing, we have a series of blog posts which might be of interest to you.
Until next time, thanks for reading.
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