Content Marketing. You’ve heard the term, but have you got a strategy in place? It’s crucial in this day and age to populate your social media with interesting and relevant content to keep the engagement levels high, but where do you even begin?
Content marketing really refers to saturating your social platforms with information, articles, graphics, and links that your customer base will eat up with a spoon. It means distributing your content in an attractive way to entice new customers and engage the existing ones.
This fall, I met with other Interprose team members from across the country to rock the 2016 Digital Summit. DSDC provided us with the opportunity to meet with fellow industry leaders and discuss trends and ideas in our field.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. The Hub and Spoke Model
When it comes to content marketing strategies, one of my favorites is the Hub and Spoke Model.
This model is based on the idea of purposing one item in many different ways. We always preach, “working smarter” and this is a simple technique everyone can utilize. Instead of creating a piece of content for Facebook, another for Twitter, a third to email blast, and a fourth topic to blog about – try to take one piece of really amazing and relevant content and tweak it to use across all platforms. You would be amazed at the amount of traction you can get from one piece of great content.
2. Customizing Content
With the Hub and Spoke idea fresh in our minds, it’s important to remember that all content needs to be customized. A copy-and-paste technique just won’t yield results. A piece of content should act differently when posted for the story-lovers of Facebook, versus the business owners of LinkedIn, versus the quick and snappy Tweeters of the world.
It may seem confusing at first, but Interprose can help you take one piece of content and optimize it for use on different platforms.
3. Be a Great Storyteller
A strategy we can all agree on is the importance of telling great stories and developing great relationships. It seems like an obvious reminder, but in a world about numbers, analytics, and measureable results… clients sometimes care less about the story being told.
Reach out to followers with industry news, relevant articles, and the stories that make your company so unique. By focusing on enhancing a relationship with your target audience, they might not “like” your Facebook posts right away… but they will start to trust and believe in your brand as a whole, which is much more valuable. Remember: Relationship building first, metrics second.
4. Focus on the Long Term
We live in a world of instant results, and have become used to an instantaneous lifestyle.
Unfortunately, content marketing isn’t an overnight process. You can’t expect to see the pay-offs of your hard work in your first week of tweeting or your first few months of Facebook posts. Interprose always focuses on developing useful content and keeping a detailed calendar of how and when it will be posted.
Be diligent in documenting your content-marketing strategies and monitoring your results over the long-term!
As you begin to build your content market strategy remember to take a look at the Hub & Spoke Model, think about customization, be a great storyteller, and focus on the long-term.
Looking for more guidance with your content-marketing goals? Interprose has a whole communications team that would be glad to take the wheel! Contact us today.
