By: Cici Allen
I grew up all around the world, so education and communication have always intrigued me. By the time I was 12 or 13, I had already travelled half of the globe and had picked up bits and pieces of foreign languages. I moved to Minnesota when I was 17 to attend St. Cloud State University, where I continued the theme by earning Communication, German, and Geography degrees.
I landed my first “big girl job” when I was in college with a little tech company called Microsoft. I started at the bottom, working at a kiosk selling Microsoft products, but worked my way up to Marketing Manager for the Midwest, where I helped promote the newest Surface Pro to colleges across the Midwest.
After my exciting time with Microsoft ended, I shifted careers and moved to the “agency side.” where I have worked with casinos, the hospitality industry, retailers, technology companies, and health care clients to enhance their marketing and advertising strategies.
While helping clients with their marketing goals, I’m often asked, “What’s content marketing?” The short answer is that content marketing educates and informs the consumer, creating brand awareness of new products and services—while at the same time building credibility and developing relationships. If you’re looking to give content marketing a try, here are a few guidelines to make your content stand out and get better reach:
Purpose: What do you expect to accomplish from the content? The objective can be multi-dimensional, or it can be as simple as getting more users to visit your website or click on a product/service. But being specific about your objective upfront helps narrow down the goals and guide other decisions down the line
Message: Every brand has a message. What’s yours? I think the biggest challenge most agencies face when it comes to content is convincing the client to be customer-centric. Content marketing depends on how your message resonates with the customer. When crafting a message, think about an “elevator pitch”—something simple that you can say in just a couple sentences.
Packaging: The packaging of the content needs to be sharp. Avoid misspellings and cookie-cutter designs. Instead, use creative resources to design a great experience for your customers and prospects. Clarity is vital here: consumers should be able to quickly and easily identify what the top-level concept is
Distribution and Promotion: Have you heard about push/pull syndication? When it comes to distribution and promotion of your content, develop networks on the channels (whether social or editorial) where conversations are happening that are relevant to the people and companies you’re trying to reach. Also, keep in mind that the content you push out must be designed carefully to avoid duplication and a high ratio of self-promotion. And of course, always optimize your content with keywords tied to your product/service—this is the “pull.”
Call to Action: Whether you’re curating content on your blog, email newsletter, or elsewhere, calls to action (also called CTAs) should guide the reader to a conclusion that involves the next step. These could include visiting a website page, signing up for a webinar, or scheduling a demo. However, the call to action should never distract from the key message.
Monitor, Measure, Analyze, and Act: How did the content perform? Measure the short- and long-term success of initial goals along with tools and processes. Google Alerts, social media monitoring tools, and web analytics are great tools to track the reach of the content you’re promoting.
At end of each campaign, analyze where you’re getting traction and document what appears to be working or not, then make changes in your next campaign accordingly!
For more help with your content strategy, check out these posts from our archives:
Thanks for sharing!