Successful marketing is all about engaging your audience members and providing value to them, whether that’s educating them on a topic, entertaining them, or aiming for something in between. Trends in content marketing and in social media affect how you go about accomplishing that goal. For example, there might be some free tools that could make it easier to track your performance or help you reach new audiences.
Ultimately, though, it all comes down to engaging the right people — and content marketing is a key tool for doing that. Recently, I was collecting information from a variety of friends, partners, past clients, and other industry leaders to learn more about how they recommend using content to engage your audiences and achieve your marketing goals. Here’s what they had to say:
1. Start with distribution in mind.
Too often, marketers only think about content distribution once something is written or a message is crafted — and that’s if they really think about it at all. This makes it easy for marketing teams to fall into the rut of distributing content the same way every time, which doesn’t do much for engagement. For content to work well, you’ve got to distribute it in the way that makes the most sense for your audience.
“Content no longer has a one-size-fits-all approach, and you see marketers make this mistake time and again. Check your favorite brands on Facebook, and I bet most of them are just reposting blog posts to an empty audience with little to no engagement. All brand content should be created with the assumption that it will be distributed. Our approach to creating content for effective distribution is to ensure it’s medium- or platform-agnostic as early as possible: The content should be adaptive for different environments,” says Brian Rauschenbach, co-founder and head of industry at Add3.
As marketing and content become more integrated with other areas of the business, like sales, PR, hiring, etc., it’s important to know how you’re measuring success so you can set the right goals for your team. Rebekah Iliff, chief strategy officer at AirPR, has said before, “Part of the current ‘pain’ is understanding what metrics actually matter...the bottom line is that it’s not longer good enough to report on impressions, headline views, and social shares.”
She notes that to measure successfully, companies must know what questions they’re trying to answer, align stakeholders with what matters most, focus on message results, eliminate noise, and prioritize accurate PR attribution.
3. Align your content and SEO with your audience and your goals.
Not all pieces of content are designed to achieve the same things or speak to audiences in the same positions. Aligning your content and SEO practices with your consumers’ journey can help you engage them more effectively.
“For instance, is the content you’re creating meant for first-time discovery of your brand? Then include accolades and awards, and link to your Wikipedia page. Is it meant to reinforce your brand authority on something you do or sell? Make sure your Knowledge Graph is fully optimized. Or is it meant to generate leads and convert readers? Then ensure everything from the language to the UX is optimized to reduce as much friction as possible,” recommends Mark Fillmore, VP of earned media and development at Elite SEM, a client of ours.
4. Share your own expertise, and read what others have to say.
Creating content can be as good for you and your brand as it is for your audience, as Falon Fatemi, CEO and founder of Node, which has just gone public and is a client of ours, discusses:
“By sharing my expertise, I’m forced to stay abreast of industry changes, which helps me fine-tune my own vision for the future of sales, marketing, and tech. For me, publishing content online isn’t just about sharing my expertise or reaching influencers. My Forbes column lets me test ideas in the market, explore the topic du jour, and improve my craft. My advisor and close confidant, Mark Cuban, was right all along: In business, creating content is at least as important as consuming it.”
Networking sometimes gets a bad rap as something that self-serving people do when they’re trying to get ahead. Done right, though, networking is all about being helpful and making yourself a resource to others. Paul Moskowitz, founder and CEO of the Expert Network, explains:
“Defining networking as anything other than giving and contributing to others is wrong from the outset. Influence is the product of giving: sharing valuable information, connecting people to others whom they can help and who can help them, entertaining, sympathizing, engaging in earnest. After all, influence, by definition, only matters when it can trigger action. And people only act when they feel they’re entering into a fair relationship grounded in proper give-and-take.”
Your content strategy is what guides each of your efforts; documenting it can help you achieve your goals, measure performance, and keep your entire team on the same page.
“Documenting our content marketing strategy is critical for us to align objectives beyond marketing with sales, product, and finance teams. Naturally, we engage with (and influence) a number of personas. Every team member must have their eyes on the ball, ensuring we get the most value of our investments: time, money, team members,” says Daryl Lu, head of marketing and sales at SalesWise.
You could write an amazing article that engaged your audience and generated a record number of leads. But if you only ever did that once, you’d miss out on more chances to build those relationships and see results.
“An editorial calendar and a dedication to consistent publishing is a commitment to your business and to your readership. Consistency builds credibility, increases traffic, and inspires return visitors. More importantly, it generates the kind of predictable lead flow that predicates growth,” explains Micha Hershman, Eventbrite’s senior director, demand generation and inbound marketing and a client of ours.
8. Acknowledge positive feedback, but don’t ignore constructive criticism from your audience.
While it’s not healthy to only focus on what’s going “wrong,” marketing leaders know that they have to always push themselves to improve their messages and tactics; that’s what makes constructive criticism so important.
“Praise is the most overrated thing in life. It teaches you nothing. Criticism from customers, clients, audience members, and beyond is the petri dish of improvement,” says Jay Baer, a friend and client of ours and the president of Convince & Convert and author of “Hug Your Haters.”
9. Put content to use in a variety of ways.
Part of what makes content so effective is that you can create different types of content and put them to use in countless ways to reach your audience where it’s at. Jami Schwartz, head of content and marketing technologies at Kabbage, explains various ways her company uses content:
“We love to use content as many ways as possible to highlight our customers. Recently, we made a five-part video series broken down into smaller stories to use on the blog, and then we created behind-the-scenes snapshots for Instagram. We use customer testimonials in video and written form as sales enablement tools across the board to let our customers speak to their own experiences. The video series is a great widespread content tool because we can break that down and highlight partners, nonpartners, and customers through video and on-site content and then promote it through social media and email to our networks.”
10. It’s vital to build a tribe.
Building a tribe creates a specific polarization, indicating what you do or don’t stand for. It creates a belief system that deeply integrates your audience with the content, which means that engagement and sharing are extremely simple to drive. Without these two elements, it will always be difficult to have content that’s naturally and authentically distributed, and it will be far less relevant to those you serve at the highest level. Scott Oldford from INFINITUS Marketing + Technology explains:
“Without a tribe, it’s nearly impossible to be able to get your content to stick when distributed. Your intended audience is looking for a tribe, which means they are looking for a ‘why’ that’s larger than them. Around your business and your content, it’s critically important that you give them a ‘why’ that’s clearly defined, larger than them, and in which they really believe themselves.”
Marketing today isn’t really about you and your company; it’s all about your audience and how well you meet its needs. Engaging, high-quality content is one of your best tools to do that, and with all this advice, you will be well on your way to keeping your audience engaged and your brand top of mind.
