Content Marketing is a hot, hot topic right now as are social media, mobile and local. Along with being a popular focus for marketers, there’s really a deluge of information being published and it’s not always clear what the best advice is.
The recent kudos for TopRank’s Online Marketing blog in the areas of Content Marketing (#1 on Junta42 list) and Social Media Marketing (#2 on Social Media Examiner list), made me remember what a great network of smart, accomplished, “walk the talk” content marketers I get to connect with. So, I reached out to a few of the people I respect most in these areas to share a single tip on Content Marketing for the benefit of readers trying to make sense of where it might fit in their mix:
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules
Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time. Worry less about sounding professional and worry more about creating remarkable content that other humans can relate to.
What does that mean? It means losing the jargon and Franken-speak (“end-to-end,” “win-win,” “synergy,” and other cruddy phrases). It means being conversational (writing a blog post as if you are writing a letter to a friend). It means showing more than telling how your products and services live in the world.
The inherent tension in marketing is that businesses always want to talk about their products, when your customers want to hear what your products can do for them. Use your content as a way to show the human side of the your business. Which is the side, by the way, that will resonate best with your customers.
David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist, Speaker and author of Real-Time Marketing & PR
Nobody cares about your products and services except you. This knowledge is essential to great marketing because it gets your organization away from just yakking incessantly about your products and services. What your buyers do care about are themselves and they care a great deal about solving their problems (and are always on the lookout for a company that can help them do so).
Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks and author of Engage!
There is no market for your messages. Become a resource for your communities in your communities. They’re looking for insight, answers, direction, keys to unlock solutions that they did not know existed before you. The key is empathy. And to find this key takes research and understanding. Develop content based on what inspires interaction today and then build bridges between those conversations, communities and you.
Jay Baer, Social Media Strategy Consultant and co-author of The Now Revolution
Content marketing can be scary. Staring at the little blinking cursor can paralyze even experienced content creators. To make it easier, focus first on “atomizing” your existing content. (Thanks to Todd Defren for that term).
Be a digital dandelion. Take one of your existing white papers (or other form of comprehensive content) and deconstruct it. Make it into five blog posts. And a Webinar. And a podcast. And a Slideshare presentation.
Each of those content modalities will have different audiences, so you’re building reach. Plus, each of those content modalities will be found and indexed by your most important customer – some guy named Google.
Repurposing and repackaging your content makes your content marketing task easier, AND more effective.
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers
Stop Writing about Everything. So many brands create content and try to cover everything, instead of focusing on the core niche that they can position themselves as an expert around. No one cares about your special recipe. No one cares about your iPad review, that has nothing to do with marketing automation.
Find your niche, and then go even more niche. For example, let’s say you sell travel gear for pets. If that is the case, don’t create a blog on “pets” or “pet supplies”. Create consistent and valuable content to solve your customers’ problems around traveling with pets. Seems simple, but many companies make this mistake. For more, this one may help: Content Marketing Stinks: Fix It
Each of these great people writes online in numerous channels, offline and has published a book, or many books, on the intersection of content, social and PR. They have experienced hard-won insights and I’m guessing so have you. If you were giving advice to budding marketers or even experienced marketers looking for direction on Content Marketing, what would your tip be? What one piece of advice would you give them?
