Content Marketing

What is content marketing and how to win when implementing it in your strategy?

Content Marketing is a way for you to find your tribe, earn their trust, enlighten them and over some time, turn them into your brand advocates.

It is proven! There is no denying that this works, but if you are looking for shortcuts to get noticed, this is not it! It is a marathon, and it takes consistent review and engagement with your audience to set up a system that will actively promote your service or product even when you are not in the room. Isn’t that the goal? Getting your business to a point where the word-of-mouth takes over, allowing you to focus “on the business” and not be caught up “in the business.”

How does it work?

Content Marketing acts as a funnel. You produce “stuff” (this can be video, articles, micro blog posts, pictures, anything really) with a value-add to someone and provide an option into your solution. You repeat this process and gradually move the prospective client from being a foreigner to a client, and from a client to a fan. If you repeat this long enough, your clients will eventually become your brand advocates and hopefully superfans!

What are the building blocks of content marketing?

What makes up the “Content” part of content marketing?

Text: Blogs, newsletters, memo’s, articles.

Videos: How-to videos, webinars, client profiles, testimonials, brand films, interviews, product demo’s.

Recording: Podcasts, interviews, testimonials, case studies, product demo’s.

Photo’s: Stories, quotes, how-to’s, instructional imagery, teams, company culture, goals, celebrations, operations.

You can decide how you want this offering to stack up.

What happens once you have the content?

That is a trick question! There is no point where you will “have the content” because content models require you to always create value for your audience. There is no finish line – ever. Although your content production will ebb and flow, the right mindset is to have it as a part of your communication culture. A culture that puts the emphasis on the customer.

The challenge is to find ways to present your breadcrumbs (content) to new audiences with a problem. A problem that you can solve. The more content you’ll have on offer, the easier it will be for a potential client to see that you are a credible source of knowledge when it comes to this particular problem. The entire focus of your content marketing strategy should focus on this: Solve someone’s problem, and establish yourself as the one who is the go-to girl for that problem. The book by Seth Godin This is Marketing is a must-have if you want to dive deeper into this. (We will list this title along with others below.)

When your marketing is about your brand, it is not content marketing.

When your communication is about your audience’s problem, that is content marketing!

Please share this with someone.

Can any business, service or product make use of content marketing?

Yes! Content marketing is a smart way of decoding your audience’s problem and establishing yourself as a leader in your field.

Let’s see how this article could be “mined” to produce some content for content marketing purposes.

Writing: You are it! The fact that you are reading about content marketing here and now, is proof that you are looking to find a solution to your problem. (Your problem is how to get noticed through all of the noise.)
Video: You can convert or produce a lot of video content for a content calendar (download a free one here) if you plan and execute on a production schedule. In one instance, we produced 66 television ads and 56 video cuts for a South African insurance company that built a library for a year’s worth of consistent posting and engagement – all of this was captured in 3 days.
Audio: Listen to the audio version of this here. (Pardon the author’s radio voice… I’m no Ron Burgandy)
Images:

Make sure your agency/designer is on board with your vision and mesh the content with your brand’s touchpoints as much as you can, and as often as you can.

How can this post be made into content ready for seeding?

Before we go further, let’s look at some examples of how this post could be mined for content to share with your audience:

Overlap

Content marketing is a function of the value proposition for your audience, the frequency at which you share, and the volume at which you produce the content. The success of your content is also dependant on the algorithms that serve up your ideas. This means that, in the same way that you start saving more money when your saving is compounded, you will start seeing an upward curve in the rate of which your content is adopted, as you share and produce more and more of what you do. A neat little trick is to make sure that you create overlap by building handles for your audience to reengage with other content streams within your sphere. This will play into the hands of any social media algorithm, and essentially train your audience to re-engage with you more often.

An example of that would be to also show your audience a blog post like this:

If you would like to read other books we found useful on the topic, you can check out our blog on these titles:

5 Books every (content) marketer should read.

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing.

Over the years we have had many clients see the positive impact that content marketing can have on their brands. In many instances, locally produced content (where we are in South Africa) have ended up on a global playground when content gets picked up to be recycled to an international audience. The ideas we create could be around for a while… There rests a massive responsibility upon the shoulders of any content creator to be authentic, ethical and honest. We all know that attention is the new currency, but we should never allow hype or gimmicks to wag the dog. Be kind.

John-Henry is the founder and owner of The Media Farm and has been creating television, films, music and digital content for more than 15 years.