Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses is the book for explaining the power of content marketing and explaining how to develop it in such a way as to build your audience.
Joe Pulizzi describes his own work in case study format along with many others in how it is that they grew an audience up around the marketing material that they produced and disseminated. Summing up the entirety of the book into a sentence – Content Inc. shows how to educate consumers to effectively buy in to an organizations products or services.
Understanding The Social Media Ecosystem
Given the rapid explosion of niche channels for content, differentiation of content and establishing an engaging brand voice that will build a base of engaged readers/consumers is the key to gaining audience and thus monetizing the content marketing efforts made. While diversification is a key component of attracting more people once there is an established base, Pulizzi warns against starting this too soon lest the core audience start to feel declining affinity/interest in the material presented. Another words make something that really works first and then start to noodle with other demographics, buyers personas, etc. as otherwise this could lead to a sub-optimal ROI on what is, basically, A/B testing of content.
Varieties of Content Marketing Outlets
Earned media which has links to owned properties that has it’s reach further amplified via social platforms is the primary goal of content marketing. A PPC campaign has a start and end date limited by the budget, whilst effective content marketing continues to draw in leads by merit of it’s placement on appropriate websites.
Let me give an example. Several months ago I attended a presentation given by Alex Furmansky about his company Budsies. For those that watch Shark Tank, this may be a familiar name/company as he turned down the offers for investment presented in order to continue his own path sans their direction. In his presentation he presented internal data that dramatically showed that while there was a spike in visitors and business following his appearance on the Shark Tank, that this was a near blip in comparison to basic content marketing driving business traffic following placements of articles about his businesses on Huffington Post.
Content Marketing Funnels, Conversions and Engagement
Implementing a successful content marketing program requires longer term, big-picture thinking and an advocate with enough authority in the enterprise that their directives will be followed. An effective content marketing project requires a paradigmatic shift from PPC and paid media marketing strategies.
It’s vital to set realistic KPIs and a timeframe for achieving them. Small wins early on are good, but unless there is the recognition as to the entirety of the content marketing process quitting before taking final steps leads to a wasted investment of resources.
It’s only happened twice that I’ve had clients jump into content marketing with enthusiasm, only to fall back to traditional push marketing tactics a month later. Their rationale is understandable – they want speedy ROI and PPC promotions, advertised discounts and similar campaigns deliver the immediate spikes in sales that most businesses budgets are accustomed to. The problem with this is by not continuing to develop and promote makes a brand look stagnant or find the right niches from where it’s customers are naturally viewing content.
Optimizing Content Marketing Efforts via Differentiation
Using content marketing most effectively means being able to edit and remix content according to a variety of format types. Content on videos can be placed into text formats for those, like me, that prefer to read. White papers, which are one of of the most complex forms of content marketing, can be simplified into a variety of smaller formats to garnish readers attention to specific information found within.
One best practice for content marketing that has allowed me to reduce the time and costs associated with market research has been to review traditional marketing content. Using this as a based for ideation and production is one of the reasons that I ask all my clients to provide me as many examples of their marketing as possible and to provide examples of what they believe is the type of style and format that they aspire to have.
From Content to Marketing: Promotion
Creating unique content that engages the interest of targeted demographics is the first step, SEO optimization the second one and placement the third.
This requires knowing the outlets where such information is housed as well as their editorial and community guidelines.
This requires knowing how to do effective outreach with journalists, writers, editors, bloggers, etc. as well as being able to demonstrate trustworthiness.
One of the many reasons why I decided to create this online repository of my research, in fact, was to do exactly this. By having an online portfolio of research in various subject area not only am I able to have social proof of affinity when reaching out but it allows them to confirm that the material I’ve produced and am asking them to place is methodologically sound.
Content Inc. presents an impressive detailing of all the above and more and is definitely something that I will re-read and encourage all those in the field to pick up as well.