What is content marketing

docx

School

New York University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

1035

Subject

Marketing

Date

Feb 20, 2024

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by AgentExploration19716

What is content marketing? Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - A meal at a Michelin star restaurant is a rare, delightful, and expensive experience, but did you know that the Michelin Guide that identifies these fine dining establishments is actually a resource published by a French tire company? The guide was first published by Michelin Tires in 1900 as a way to generate demand for cars in France by offering people maps, restaurant listings, and advice for planning road trips. There wasn't a resource like this available for motorists at the time, helping Michelin get the attention of potential customers who might need to purchase tires from their cars in the future. Cut to over 100 years later, and the Michelin Guide is still being published today, and most importantly, positions the company as the world's most trusted advisor on traveling, and that is what content marketing done right can do for your organization. Hi, I'm Brian Honigman. I'm a marketing consultant and an NYU adjunct professor, and for the last decade, I've worked with organizations like the United Nations and Thompson-Reuters on creating impactful content marketing programs. Throughout this LinkedIn learning course, you'll learn how to create a content strategy to purposely guide your efforts, understand the ins and outs of producing meaningful content, and the most effective techniques for distributing this content to the right people. A lot of old forms of advertising just aren't as effective as they used to be. Now, it's more important than ever to earn trust and loyalty with your customers for the long term. Join me in creating your own plan for embracing content marketing the right way. Setting strategic goals Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - Every day, businesses publish articles, podcasts, and videos that their customers just won't see. That's because it's easy to produce lackluster content that gets lost or ignored, and unfortunately, that's what happens when many companies invest in content marketing. While it's certainly a challenge, producing remarkable content for your customers is possible when you're following the guidance of a content marketing strategy. This document is where your organization should map out how exactly you'll use content to reach your goals. Creating a strategy is an opportunity to define who, what, when, where, why, and how of your approach to content marketing. The point of this strategy is to make sure you're setting up a framework for making purposeful decisions and setting business goals to guide those decisions at every step of the process. With your goals clearly defined in your strategy, it'll be easier to set priorities, plan out each content campaign more thoughtfully, and collaborate with others. While a strategy

doesn't guarantee success, I've seen many companies succeed with content marketing when they're organized and deliberate. For me, the first and most important step to starting with a content marketing strategy is setting strategic goals so the results you're looking to achieve are clear from the beginning. A strategic goal is an outcome that's meaningful for your business, easy to understand at a glance, and straightforward to measure. Some common content marketing-centric goals are establishing thought leadership, improving customer loyalty, demand generation, increasing sales, audience development, and earning brand awareness. One way to guide which goals you'll focus on and when is by being aware of the two types of goals, ongoing and campaign goals. The first are ongoing goals, which are meant to measure the results you're looking to achieve on a regular basis. For example, let's say your company publishes articles weekly, and your team would like to measure the ongoing engagement from visitors reading this content. While there are many ways to measure increasing engagement, you could look at how these articles increase or decrease the time spent on your website on a monthly basis. This is considered an ongoing goal as it's an outcome your company will likely monitor for the longterm, since there isn't an end date associated with publishing these articles. Campaign goals are another type of goal you'll set as they are directly related to measuring the success of time-sensitive activities. I recently worked with a client publishing case studies and an executive interview series as part of a three month-long launch campaign for their latest service offering. For them, a major goal of this short-term campaign was to generate 300 leads from potential customers, providing their contact info in exchange for viewing their premium content. This goal of generating 300 leads is a campaign goal because it indicates their progress of an initiative with a defined start and stop date. So, keep these goal types in mind as you think about the right mix of outcomes to focus on. And remember that no matter what your content goals are, you are more likely to achieve them with a solid content marketing strategy. So, start thinking about yours. Defining your audience Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - [Instructor] Who is this for? That's what every marketer needs to ask themselves before creating content of any kind. Prior to planning your next campaign, it's essential to identify who exactly your audience is, what they want, and how you can best serve those needs with your content. When first investing in content marketing, many organizations make the mistake of focusing their campaigns too broadly in an attempt to connect with everyone. That really only makes sense for large brands like Coca- Cola. Really, most companies target a very specific customer base. Knowing

who your customers are matters because you can better personalize your content to align with their background, interests, and preferences. This alignment increases the chances of your blog posts, videos, and other content, resonating with your audience. Creating a positive connection with them and driving action. That's why I recommend creating customer personas to describe the different types of people your business serves so they can inform your approach to content on an on-going basis. Think of the customer persona as a profile of your customers listing details about them based on their demographics, motivations, challenges, and mindset. This way, you can make more informed decisions about what topics to write about, which images should be used with your campaigns, and what types of content are more effective. Aim to compile two to five personas that reflect the specific groups of people that make up your customer base. Then assign demographics and behaviors that define them. These personas can be as straightforward or complex as your prefer, as long as their informative and built from both research and observations about your customers. For instance, a newly launched online investment company wanted to better define who their customers were, so they can focus their videos on the needs of the right people. They did that through customer surveys, collecting qualitative research about their backgrounds, behavioral drivers, and frustrations of first time investors. From this research, they created a persona they named the up-and-comer. The persona is a young professional, 25 to 30 years old, that's just setting up their financial plan and is motivated to buy when they receive helpful investing recommendations without complicated jargon. Having this persona in mind helped this investing firm create videos geared to this up-and-comer, offering the right advice and tone in their social media messages. Similar to this example, some of your content will be solely focused on addressing the needs of one particular customer persona while other campaigns may address a few at a time. And now it's your turn. Whether through conducting interviews, referencing research studies, running a focus group, or reviewing your existing customer data, it's up to you to define who your ideal audience is. Organizing topics into categories Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - For an organization to become known for its expertise, creative constraints need to exist. One helpful constraint to organize your content marketing is limiting what topics your company is covering to a select group of categories. Each category represents a range of topics that's important to your customers and aligns with the expertise and offerings of your organization. A category should be specific enough to have a clear focus but broad enough so that there's many topics that fit within the theme that your company can address. For example, an art supplies company could focus

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

their topic categories on scrapbooking, home decor projects, kids crafts, and seasonal activities. These categories should be different from one another, but complementary at the same time, as each might slightly overlap in focus. The point of these categories is to ensure you've only created content on topics within these areas, focusing your team's efforts and streamlining decision-making. This way, every time you sit down to write a new case study, craft posts for LinkedIn, or script your next video series, you are clear on what topics should and shouldn't be addressed. And most of all, consistently publishing useful content on the same overarching themes can help your customers remember you, as repetition helps build a memory. But which categories of topics should you commit to? I recommend creating three to five categories from the list of topics you come up with based on your personas, customer feedback, and your research on what's already been published. You want to look for patterns in the topics your customers are interested in to see how these themes can be logically broken down into broader categories. A good example of this can be seen on Chase Bank's blog that covers a range of financial topics broken down into the following five categories: personal finance, tips for better life experiences, financial strategies for small businesses, innovative business leaders, and stories about supporting communities. If we take a closer look at the personal finance category called Your Money, there's articles on a range of topics, from "How to Protect "Your Aging Relatives' Money" to "What You Need to Know "About Home Equity." While each of these categories is different, they all connect back to the financial focus of the organization aimed to educate readers and reflect the company's values. You're certainly not committed to the same categories forever, as they can change with the direction of your company, but it is important to stick with them for the long term. Lastly, organizing content on your website in line with these topic categories can help improve your visibility in the search engines. By consistently publishing content with specific categories, it'll be easier for Google to navigate your site's architecture, discover similar content within each category, and most of all, understand what subject areas your organization is a leading authority in. These categories may feel limiting at first, but once you've got this constraint in place, you'll be more focused than ever. Tips for successful storytelling Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - Storytelling isn't selling. It's actually a method of sharing information with an audience by conveying emotions, experiences, and perspectives to address a core message. Similarly, a business can embrace storytelling with content as a way to convey valuable information to their customers to attract and engage them on the topics they care about. Content marketing is primarily driven by storytelling, as it's a distinct way for businesses to

connect with their customers beyond advertising the benefits of their products and services. To produce meaningful content that builds loyalty and trust with your audience, embrace the fundamentals of storytelling. The first is to identify the core message you're trying to communicate about a topic. Think of it as the purpose behind the topic to be addressed in your content, and the main takeaway you want your audience to walk away with. If you're writing an article about the impact of climate change on employment, then the core message may be that there's lesser-known consequences to climate change to account for. The core message will guide the rest of the details of the article, infographic, documentary, or larger campaign you're working on, which is why it needs to be clear from the start. Next, consider what type of story would effectively convey the topic, and the core message behind it. Should this story be educational? Then, a how-to focused resource might be appropriate. Is this story meant to be entertaining? A humorous tone might be an unexpected way to reach people on a topic that's typically considered serious, dull, or has already been covered extensively. Will the story be values-driven? In this case, you might highlight a partnership at your organization that represents the company's mission in action. After that, it's time to think about the content structure, as the story you plan to tell needs to have a defined beginning, middle, and end to ensure it all makes sense. Having a familiar structure makes it easier for people to finish your content with a strong understanding of the core message. And sometimes, the journey a person experiences with content, when there's a defined starting and stopping point, can even lead to an emotional response. And lastly, always include characters to add a human element and showcase different experiences and perspectives within your content. Whether interviewing an employee in your video series, addressing your customer directly in a white paper, or hosting your company's podcast, showcase people as the characters in your content to make it more relatable and less corporate. For instance, the Cleveland Clinic and Academic Medical Center hosts a podcast where each episode features an interview with a healthcare professional from the clinic. These experts share their advice on important and timely medical topics, but most of all, discuss their personal perspectives and experience in treating different health conditions. As a result, these complex health-related topics feel far less intimidating. Follow these storytelling tips to majorly improve the quality of your content and review the many other LinkedIn learning courses on how to become a better storyteller. Selecting the right type of content Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video

- Remember when QR codes were popular for companies to use in their marketing campaigns? You probably don't because they quickly fell out of popularity as they actually added friction to the process of communicating with customers, which really is not the ideal scenario. You want to select content formats that make your message easier for customers to comprehend, align with their preferences, and match to your skills and resources. Before deciding what content to create, you need to know what format options are available. For starters, there's different types of written content like blog posts, long-form articles, case studies, white papers, reports, email, print magazines, and e-books. This is the most widely used content format by marketers as every organization will need to write at some point to share information with their customers on their website or elsewhere. And then there's more visually-focused content formats like videos, infographics, images, and presentations that are ideal for simplifying complex ideas into more digestible concepts. Another is interactive content like tools, webinars, quizzes, polls, and of course, social media, all of which allow people to engage directly with the information being shared. Audio content is one more category to keep in mind as it entails podcasts, audiograms, and skills for smart speakers, which are effective at building deep relationships with customers. With these formats in mind, choose a content type that'll provide the most seamless experience for your customer in terms of finding, consuming, and sharing this information. Are they viewing content while they're at work? A blog post or report may be easiest for them to skim. Or are they more likely to view your content from their phone during their commute? Then a video might be the best approach for sharing a message with them on the go. These choices should be informed by researching which channels your audience is active on and the types of content they prefer to consume. The best way to gather this information is to ask your customers, review your analytics, observe where competitors are active, and reference leading industry research. For instance, a study by Quartz found that executives are most drawn to data visualizations, photography, and charts, and are the most active on LinkedIn over other social channels. If your customers are primarily company executives, then this research is particularly useful in guiding your format choices. And lastly, choose content types your organization has the skills and resources to execute effectively, an often overlooked consideration. While it's good to challenge yourself with content marketing, be realistic in terms of what skillsets your team does and doesn't have in terms of producing certain types of content. The goal here is to avoid creating mediocre campaigns and instead spend more of your limited time and resources on producing impactful content you have the expertise to execute. Don't just adopt what's popular. Instead, choose a content format aligned with your message and the customers you're trying to reach. Formatting content for distribution

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - You've got to be proactive in order to get people to read, watch, view, or listen to your content. One of the best ways to plan ahead and earn more visibility for your campaigns is to format them with the search engines and social media in mind. Make the following strategic choices with your content before it is published to improve its performance on these key distribution channels. Let's start with the search engines. A recent study found that 68% of all measurable website traffic is the result of organic and paid search, highlighting how effective Google and other search engines are at driving traffic. To earn greater visibility in search for your company, always include keywords throughout your written content in a natural and consistent manner with the reader in mind. Keyword phrases are those strings of words a person might search for using Google to find information on a particular topic. Add these keywords to each piece of written content, specifically within the title, body of the work, URL, and in the subheaders that organize a resource into different sections. For instance, a blog post from Lowe's on how to install a tile backsplash includes relevant keyword phrases throughout the article to gain more visibility in search. The keyword tile backsplash is included four times in all the right places in a conversational way to help the article rank for the term, while not forcing its inclusion for the sake of it either. Beyond written content, think about your keyword choices when uploading videos on YouTube and adding new podcast episodes to iTunes and similar networks, as well. Now, let's move on to social media. As you're producing a campaign, identify different ways of encouraging people to share this content with their network on social media while they're interacting with it and afterwards. For articles, reports, and other written content, highlight key takeaways like an important quote or a meaningful sentence to emphasize tidbits worth sharing on social media. When recording a podcast, remind listeners of where you're active on social media and how to stay in touch and provide feedback between episodes to help encourage conversation. Another technique is optimizing your website with Facebook's Open Graph markup and Twitter Cards to ensure content is displayed correctly when shared on either channel. And lastly, when sharing video with your customers, include social media related call-to-action, either within the video itself or as a part of the video's description. It's time to get proactive and embrace these tactics for formatting your content before it is published to ensure each campaign earns the visibility it deserves. Promoting with owned and shared media Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video

- After producing content for your customers, it's time to focus on distribution or how you'll make sure they see and interact with the campaigns you've created. What works best to ensure you're reaching the right people with content is by embracing an integrated approach through the PESO model. Introduced in Gini Dietrich's book "Spin Sucks", PESO stands for paid, earned, shared, and owned media and is a methodology for integrating each type of media into your strategy, and it's how I recommend you structure your approach to promoting content, as each media type can help cross-promote the others to drive meaningful business results. Let's dive into promoting owned and shared media effectively to gain visibility, establish authority, and encourage interactions with your audience. Owned media is the content your organization has full ownership of, as your team created it and it is published on your website, blog, or other property you own. For example, any content like articles, reports, or videos that are original and live on your website is owned media as opposed to an article published on LinkedIn or a YouTube video that you don't have full control over. Owned media should be your top priority in terms of what you're promoting. You stand to gain the most benefits from unique, original content that lives on your properties as you control the whole experience. For example, paid media, like an advertising campaign on Twitter, could drive traffic to an in-depth research report published on your website which is owned media. Each type of media can be used to promote the other types and achieve your content marketing goals, but the main priority should be encouraging engagement with owned media. Next is shared media which is primarily content on social media but specifically the kind that's co- produced by the input of a company and consumers. For instance, after a company shares an Instagram post to their account, their audience comments on it and shares this post with their own network with commentary. If many of the commenters agree or disagree with the post, then this response can reframe the content entirely beyond the organization's control, and that's shared media, when there's multiple parties contributing to a piece of content. User-generated content is a form of shared media, as it's free content created by consumers about a company. So when people see it, they're more likely to trust its authenticity. To encourage the creation of shared media, prompt people to participate in your campaigns by asking your followers on social media or subscribers over email to reply with their opinion. And then there's also more involved approaches like featuring customers in a campaign, hosting a contest to incentivize participation, or creating a hashtag for customers to use. It's time to unlock more distribution opportunities for your content through the promotion of owned and shared media. Promoting with earned and paid media

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - Earning the attention of an existing audience is one of the best ways of getting your content seen by the right people. And that's exactly what you should be doing with earned and paid media to guide the distribution of your content. As a key component of the PESO model, which stands for Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media, earned media is any content produced about a company that they didn't produce themselves or paid to have created. It's often the result of free publicity from publications, bloggers, podcasts, influencers, and other news sources. Earned media can come in the form of a news article, mentions on social media from influential accounts, a cable news segment, podcast interviews, or even a customer's review. Think of earned media as the ability to get your company's own content in front of an audience who's already interested in the same topic. An example of this is pitching your content for coverage in the press. So you've just released a new research study on your industry, which is your owned media. In order to gain earned media about that study, start pitching it to relevant trade publications to see if they're interested in covering it in an article to highlight its key findings. Pitching and building relationships with credible players in your industry that have their own audience are some of the best techniques for gaining earned media. Paid media, on the other hand, is when your organization pays to have its content amplified amongst a wider audience or pays to have content created by a third party. There's many types of paid media you can invest in, from pay- per-click advertising, influencer marketing, social media ads, native advertising, podcast ads, display advertising, and more. Paid media allows you to boost your content to reach more of the right people, which can be less intrusive than paying to push promotional messaging to customers. A good example of this is when a client of mine embraced the PESO model, significantly increasing the viewership of their content and growing sales in the process. We worked together to produce a range of educational and entertaining articles comparing their products to leading competitors, breaking down the pros and cons of each. Over time, their own content began to rank higher in Google searches for product comparisons of their top sellers. To further dominate in search, the organization sent its products to YouTube influencers in the industry with a prompt and a pitch to compare their offerings to leading competitors. A few influencers published video reviews of their product, which is earned media, driving attention to their brand in the short-term, and months later, increasing their visibility in search. To boost the effectiveness of this owned and earned media, we decided to also spend some funds on paid media to advertise their content on YouTube and Facebook, introducing their product to even more people. Whether pitching or paying to reach more customers, get your content to go further by adopting an integrated approach to distribution.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

Integrating content across departments Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - Content marketing can make an impact far beyond your marketing department. To reap its full benefits, you should integrate across your organization from customer service, to sales, to the C-suite. Content is very adaptable and can be produced to help any department achieve its goals, whether that's helping HR attract applicants or customer service answer repeat questions. It is the responsibility of the marketing team to identify these opportunities in the company, to integrate content, and partner with stakeholders to plan and execute their content effectively. But for another team to buy in to partnering on integrating content, they first need to understand how it benefits them directly. That's why it's important to highlight how content allows different teams to communicate with their audience more directly, driving home how it can help improve the effectiveness of their existing processes. For example, customer service may benefit from creating product guides to explain how to best use their leading product lines informed by the repeat questions they get asked. The goal here is to reduce the number of customer service requests the company receives, as customers can now reference these guides on their own when troubleshooting a product. While this is just one way of integrating content outside of marketing, there's many other practical ways of incorporating content at an organization. For example, public relations can partner with marketing on creating content that's ideal for pitching to relevant trade publications or media outlets to earn more exposure. On the other hand, the C-suite can work with marketing to author their own content like writing articles or hosting a podcast to position the organization as a thought leader. Human resources can sync with marketing to consistently produce content showcasing the company's culture and employee stories to attract like-minded candidates. And even the internal communications department can benefit from marketing support on producing content to inform employees of the latest developments at the company. If you want to dive deeper into these different use cases for integrating content marketing at your organization, check out my course on learning integrated content marketing. To make full use of the value that content marketing can offer your organization, think outside the box to identify unique opportunities for partnering across departments. Repurposing content to earn more benefits Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - You don't have to reinvent the wheel to achieve your goals with content marketing. In fact, much of your content can be repurposed into other

formats to reach a much wider audience and earn more results in the process. Most businesses think creating new content is the key to driving traffic, but that's only one way to earn attention. Content repurposing is the process of reusing the information included in a resource you've already published and sharing it again as part of a different content format. You're not publishing the same exact content again, but instead, you're repackaging in a brand new way. For example, it's common for companies who repurpose a group of blog posts on related topics into a single e-book. Or to repurpose a YouTube video into shorter videos for sharing on Instagram and Twitter, or writing an article based on the transcript of a video. Repurposing content like this is an important approach to adopt for two reasons. First off, you've already allocated resources to creating content previously, so as long as the information is still relevant, it's smart to get more traction from your existing investments. And secondly, it is likely some of your audience didn't see your content when it was published the first time, because so much messaging is published daily today. Sharing your content again in a new form gives it an opportunity to reach more of the right people especially since your audience likely prefers different types of content. To take advantage of these benefits, take some time to review your content and identify what resources are still relevant and have performed the best, as that content tends to be the most ideal for repurposing. Remember, there are a lot of ways to get this done. Whether reviewing Google Analytics to see which content drove the most conversions, or using a tool like BuzzSumo to determine your most shared content on social media. The goal is to understand what content your audience reacted to the most, as it's an indication that this is a topic of value to your customers. You should also choose resources that provide enough in depth information to warrant republishing it in another format. Repurposing does require time and effort to restructure your content, so it's important to prioritize your efforts with content that has enough substance worth republishing. For instance, a tweet or a 20-second video aren't strong candidates for repurposing since they don't have enough material to reformat. While a lengthy article or a white paper could be repurposed into multiple social media posts, a video, and an infographic since there's a lot more to work with. After that, review your content closely to determine what format would be the most ideal for reformatting this information. While the choice to reformat is up to you, a common approach is to repurpose written content into visuals and vice versa, as it's two distinct ways of sharing the same information. Attributing content actions to results Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video

- What impact has content marketing had on your business? Having a vague sense of your progress isn't good enough. You need definitive results you can measure to understand where you'll invest with your company's content moving forward. So let's dive into the four components of a successful measurement framework. The first part is choosing which metrics to pair with your content goals. A metric is a unit of measure that increases or decreases to indicate your progress in achieving a goal. For example, when the venture capital firm, First Round, launched its own publication, one of its goals was generating awareness of the organization amongst entrepreneurs and founders. Their team likely looked at metrics, like the number of engaged users on their website, email subscribers gained, and the social shares each article earned to help measure awareness. Pair three to five metrics per goal to ensure you're only paying attention to metrics that are important to the profitability of your company, indicate your progress in reaching your goals, and can help incite further action. Next, it's important to select a mix of measurement tools that can help your organization measure the goals and metrics it's focused on. Investing in a few tools to monitor your progress is necessary, as each offers different features and relying on more than one provides you with a more complete picture of your progress. The content measurement tools you decide to use will vary based on your company's needs, but Google Analytics, BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Parse.ly are all highly effective options. For instance, if understanding the performance of your content, both on your website and third-party sites from the same dashboard is important, then SEMrush is a helpful option. After selecting the right tools, the next part of the framework is reporting. Create reports with these tools on the goals and metrics you're tracking for each campaign. Like developing a Google Analytics report on the content driving traffic to your website. Each report should have a singular purpose, like summarizing the performance of your YouTube channel or highlighting the results generated from a white paper. Decide how often you'll generate and review each type of report based on its purpose and which stakeholders need to access it. Lastly, set aside time to thoughtfully analyze the reporting on your content programs. The goal of a thorough analysis of your content's performance is to understand what activities aren't working, which are progressing as planned, and which are doing better than expected. Depending on the report, you'll be able to determine what channels are effective at distributing your content, which topics are resonating with your audience, and more. To go into more detail on reporting and analyzing progress with content marketing effectively, watch my Content Marketing ROI course to learn the ins and outs of content measurement. And don't forget to embrace this measurement framework we've discussed today to help understand the impact of content marketing on your business. Conveying thought leadership with content

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - Your organization doesn't get to decide if your content is considered thought leadership. The readers, listeners, and viewers of your content are the ones that make that call. With that said, there is a lot your company can do to convey its expertise, passion, and experience more effectively through content to earn attention. Start by recognizing that in order to become known for your expertise, you've got to consistently publish content for the long term. Consistency is key as it'll take numerous interactions with your content before a person associates your organization with a particular subject area. A long-term commitment to publishing videos, infographics, or a mix of content gives you multiple opportunities to demonstrate that your content is reliable, trustworthy, and helpful. Hand in hand with committing to consistency, it is also essential that your content is always focused on a similar set of topics so it's easier for your audience to understand your expertise. For example, IBM publishes videos, White Papers, articles, and other content on artificial intelligence and cloud computing to position the organization as a leader on these topics. And while IBM does publish resources on a range of topics, they're all closely related, addressing their customers' needs and are still relevant to what the company does, making it easier to recognize them as an organization with a particular expertise. Beyond publishing consistently and focusing on the same set of topics, aim for your content to provide the best answers to your customers' most important questions. That might mean going in depth on a topic with a lengthy article to cover the many aspects of the subject and adding more up- to-date information like new industry research. Or you could produce an infographic or a video to better explain a topic visually, especially when it includes complex concepts that are difficult to understand. Aiming to provide the best answer to an important question is a more realistic approach than trying to come up with a distinctive viewpoint on a topic every time. There's no exact formula for finding the best answer. When your content is very thorough, includes the most current information, and is beautifully designed, it has a much better chance of making an impact with the right people. Another way to convey thought leadership with content is including exclusive information like insights from subject-matter experts at your company or data from a recent customer survey. For instance, the National Association of Realtors created a visual guide on how to buy your forever home and throughout the resource included the advice of different real estate experts. Sharing this type of proprietary information can help an organization become the go-to resource on a subject, leading the conversation in their niche. By embracing these techniques with your content, you'll be more effective at signaling your authority to customers. The key to the quality versus quantity debate

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video - What's more important, the quality of your content or the quantity you're producing? This is not only a cliche but a frustrating debate marketers have had for years trying to figure out what works best for their content marketing. The answer might surprise you. Both quality and quantity are of equal importance. Both is the correct answer because your content must always be high quality in order to build an affinity with your audience. And the quantity or the amount of content you're producing must be enough to consistently engage and keep your audience's attention. Otherwise it's just too easy to get forgotten. This can be addressed by investing in a content series or a show. To help you achieve the balance between quality and quantity, let's explore why a content series is the right approach and how to launch your own. For starters, a content series or a show is when an organization regularly publishes a set of related articles, podcast episodes, visuals or videos around a key theme. Each piece of content is useful on its own, but builds momentum for the entire series, similar to the idea behind a Netflix series. By framing your content into a show, it's easier to set parameters for the quality of the content being produced and how often the series will be updated. Creating these guidelines is an opportunity to set standards on how each piece should be formatted, topic choices, and the time, budget and resources needed to produce content. This way, you're not starting from scratch with each installment but instead have a clear understanding of the quality and production expectations. These guidelines also help establish how often you're publishing to ensure you're reaching people often while keeping in mind how long it takes to produce quality content. For example, Mailchimp, an email and marketing software for business, has produced multiple video series and podcasts to entertain and build a connection with their audience. One is called Outer Monologue, which is an animated series where public figures voice the narratives in their mind from past personal and professional experiences. It highlights what these creatives were thinking during moments when they seemed to have it together, helping businesses and creatives see how others approach challenges. To start your own series, select a concept for a show that's meaningful to your organization, a topic of interest to your customers, and related to what you do. The concept for your series is the most important consideration, as it'll direct the format, tone, length and other essential choices regarding its structure and production. One way to narrow your options is to think of a show concept that's specific enough to be valuable and non-generic, but broad enough to allow for different topics to be covered. So what's the most important takeaway from the quality versus quantity debate? That creating a series is one of the most effective ways of reaching your audience with high caliber content that keeps them coming back for the long term.

What is content marketing

Related Documents