For a good few years now, we’ve been constantly hearing that content is the king. That it is extremely important to create content for our audience, and content marketing is one of the most important elements of a company’s promotion strategy (not only those strictly online). It’s hard to find an online company that doesn’t have its own blog or doesn’t offer something in exchange for signing up for a newsletter. Or maybe it’s just me?
Content marketing – what is it? What is it and how to work with content so that it actually sells and helps us to reach new customers? I’m not an expert, but for several years I’ve been working with content marketing. I’ve been giving advice on content marketing to various companies and startups, not only in Poland. So why not share this knowledge with you?
From this article you will learn:
- Content marketing – what is it and where to start?
- What are the types of content in content marketing
- What are the content distribution channels?
- What do you need to get started with content marketing?
I’ll try my best to explain each of these points, but remember that the comments are yours – especially if you have any questions or want to add anything to this topic.
Content marketing – what is it?
Content marketing – what is it? Explaining it very literally and figuratively, content marketing can be called any activity related to the creation of content (both digital, on the Internet, such as blog posts, ebooks, social media posts, etc., and physical, such as books, flyers, catalogues, etc.) and delivering them to potential customers and recipients. In content marketing, our main weapon is the content, which we use to fight for the attention of our target group.
Content marketing – where to start?
To get your content marketing efforts off to the best start, think about putting together a plan of action. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate strategy right away, but it’s a good idea to write down the answers to some basic questions:
- Who is your target audience, i.e. who do you want to reach with your marketing message?
- What channels will you use to communicate?
- What resources do you have for this? (Time, people, budget, tools, etc.).
- What is the goal of your content marketing activities? What do you want to achieve with it?
- What data and information do you need to measure ROI and evaluate the success of the campaign?
- What problems or needs do you want to address with content marketing?
Types of content in content marketing
Boredom and content marketing? Content marketing gives us a really wide range of possibilities in terms of what we can create and share with our audience. Every now and then, new distribution channels emerge (new social media platforms, new features in popular apps, etc.), and with them, new variations on how to present our message. Here are some examples:
- Entries and articles on the company blog
- Guest articles
- Sponsored articles
- User-generated content (e.g. reposting, with their permission, photos on their profile on Instagram, tagged with a special hashtag)
- Movies and all video content
- Podcasts
- Whitepapers
- Case study
- Infographics
- Photos and graphics
- Webinars
- Quizzes
- Reports and press releases
- News and press articles
Think about it: what kind of content best fits your business? What type of content are you able to start creating even immediately? What type of content is most likely to be consumed by your audience?
Remember that content evokes different emotions in your audience. We browse Instagram or Pinterest for inspiring images and the life we’d like to lead ourselves. We solve online quizzes for fun and curiosity. We listen to podcasts to learn about a topic that interests us. We browse news and industry articles to find out what’s new in our information bubble.
When we stand on the other side, we publish specific things and promote a specific type of abstract to achieve a specific goal:
- educate our potential customers
- inspire
- entertain
- convince them that it is our product or service that will help solve their problem
Each of these goals can be achieved with specific content. In order not to elaborate too much on this topic, I recommend you the matrix prepared by Ninetyblack, which you can find below:
Types of channels in content marketing
Another key component of content marketing is distribution channels. Why? Well, let’s assume you have a ton of great articles on your company blog, but you don’t optimize them for SEO or brag about them on, say, social media. It’s great that you’ve put effort into preparing expert articles, but so what if no one can find them online?
Distribution channels help us gather an “audience” for our content and show it to the world (and most importantly – the people we want to attract, i.e. our potential customers). Some of the most popular channels in content marketing include social media, newsletters, and search engine traffic.
Think about it: what channels do you already have and are developing? Which channels are producing the best results? What channels do your potential customers like and where do they spend the most time?
Content marketing – where to start?
To get your content marketing efforts off to the best start, think about putting together a plan of action. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate strategy right away, but it’s a good idea to write down the answers to some basic questions:
- Who is your target audience, i.e. who do you want to reach with your marketing message?
- What channels will you use to communicate?
- What resources do you have for this? (Time, people, budget, tools, etc.).
- What is the goal of your content marketing activities? What do you want to achieve with it?
- What data and information do you need to measure ROI and evaluate the success of the campaign?
- What problems or needs do you want to address with content marketing?
What’s next? Think about it:
#1 What resources do you have?
Before we get to planning and creating a strategy, think about one thing first and foremost: what resources do you really have? Are you operating solo or in a team? Do you have the resources to outsource some of the work (such as video or text creation) to someone else, or not? How much time can you realistically devote to creating content for your business?
Remember – just because others are producing several blog articles a day, loads of content on Instagram, or YouTube videos 3 times a week doesn’t mean you have to. Regularity is key here, but don’t sacrifice quality (if you don’t have the resources) by going for quantity.
Think about it: How often are you able to create content? What type of content will it be? Can someone help you with this? Can you outsource some of the work to someone else?
#2 Set yourself goals and indicators
To see if your content marketing efforts are working, you need to start by setting a goal. Your goal could be to increase awareness of your brand in a specific market, increase leads, or increase sales.
For example, let’s assume you’re creating an online course about photography and you want to get contacts to people who might be interested in it. You create a free ebook called “5 Steps to Taking Great Photos with Your Smartphone” that is a sample of your capabilities and knowledge.
To get it, you need to provide your email address (and tick the appropriate consents in reference to RODO! :)). By doing so, you build a base of people who are interested in learning more about photography, who you can then educate and inform about your course, as well as give, for example, a special discount.
In this case, your goal is to acquire potential leads and then sell the course. Surely you’ll use your website or blog, social media, and maybe Facebook ads to promote your ebook (aka lead magnet) for example? However, before you start these activities, you need to determine for yourself how many courses you want to sell (in order to, for example, go zero or earn a certain amount), and then check which channel converts best.
#3 Review the content you already have
If you’re not starting from scratch and already have some content on your blog or social media, for example, review it, be sure to do so! You may find that with just a few modifications, you can pull content from a comprehensive blog article into a few tutorial social media posts.
Content marketing doesn’t always involve generating tons of new content. If you already have something – check it out. Surely some of the material can be reused in other ways?
Such a content audit is also good to do to check the effectiveness of your content. Maybe it turns out that the graphics you’ve been publishing on Facebook didn’t give you much reach or engagement, but will work great on Instagram. Maybe the short videos you’ve published so far on YouTube will work better on Facebook?
#4 Prepare a publication calendar
You can do it in Trello, Asana, a special app, but also in a regular spreadsheet – feel free. The most important thing is to plan what you are going to publish when you are going to publish it, and on which channels. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of all the data that can help you analyze the progress towards your goal (e.g. reach, conversions, clicks, passes, etc.).
At first, such a publication plan may seem like something unnecessary to you, but trust – without it, it’s much easier to get lost or simply lose motivation and regularity. A calendar will simply help you fight the lack of ideas for posts and the lack of regularity.
#5 Act!
It’s time for the most important step – action! Remember that even the best plan without action means little.
Content marketing is not black magic – I believe that this text will only strengthen your conviction and help you to plan (and implement!) your actions wisely. Let me know, how do you guys deal with content marketing. Do you have any additional tips on this topic?
