Content Marketing to Help Your Brand

Introduction

If you want to improve your brand awareness and create engaging and relevant content for your brand then get ready for some great tips and suggestions to help you create effective content. Not only will you be able to engage more people to your content but you will be provided with a variety of different hacks on how to create, promote, and measure the effectiveness of your brand content.  

Defining Content Marketing 

In the video “Content Marketing Foundations,” the author Dayna Rothman (2015) defines content marketing as the process of “creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your audience” (0:25). Rothman has provided 7 qualifications to help you further understand what content marketing should consist of. 

It should:

1. Engage individuals on their own terms
2. Be based on interactions with buyers
3. Tell a continuous story
4. Be the right fit for channels
5. Have a clear purpose
6. Be almost always evergreen

Brand awareness is key when it comes to creating good content marketing. Not only does it allows buyers to be able to successfully find your content when they do a search but also efficiently. Creating brand preference is also very beneficial. Rothman (2015) states that it allows you to create a bond with your customers so that they trust you and would want to do business with you. Good content marketing also allows you to reach more buyers at a lower cost. By building that trust with your customers and creating long-lasting content, you will be able to be more cost efficient. 

Bombarding customers with too much information can turn them away from looking through your content. For this reason, Rothman suggests using thought leadership in your writing as it pulls customers toward your content rather than pushing your marketing message onto them. Another great tip Rothman recommends is using the 411 aproach when setting up your content programs. This approach consists of the top four pieces being the educational assets that will help you get your message across. The two promotional pieces on the bottom consists of the a promotional soft-push piece like a report that mentions your product or service. The other one is the hard-push, piece which is a type of sales data sheet that really explains your product. Using these techniques will help you in creating engaging and relevant content.

Creating a Foundation for Content Marketing

When working on any big project it is more efficient to have a team around you to help you with different parts of the project. This also works when creating content marketing. For example, having a managing editor or associate editor who will be helpful in creating the content strategy, coordinating the team and being in charge of the quality of the content (Rothman, 2015). Rothman suggests using LinkedIn to find qualified people to be apart of the team.  

Once you have your team in order, it is important to have your teams aligned with each other and with your content. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the mission and vision of your content. You can then start to concentrate on how you will engage your buyers. 

There are many different types of buyers out there, each with their own buying journey. This is why it is important to figure out the different personas of your buyers and what they care about. Rothman (2015) suggests consulting with sales or customer service to find out what the buyers are like, what they prefer, and what types of problems or questions they have. She also suggests to ask customers themselves. This process ensures you have information from all sides and can create the right type of content to intrigue your buyers. 

We already know that buyers have personas that make them different from each other. This is why you should create an effective persona for your brand by developing your brand voice. This will ensure that it stands out from the rest. For example, setting the tone, style and, language of your brand will give your brand a recognizable and engaging persona.

Before putting your plans into action it is essential that you set your content goals. Rothman suggests using 4 steps to help you set your goals. 

• The first step she suggests is to meet with the stakeholders to get their point of view on goals. 
• Secondly, ask yourself some foundational questions such as why you are creating content and what your short-term and long term goals are. 
• The final steps are to define your qualitative and quantitative goals. After setting your goals you will then be able to move ahead. 

The last step in creating a foundation for content marketing is choosing your content technology. Rothman (2015) suggests using content project management and production platforms as they help to prioritize and assign tasks and project manage your different pieces of content. They also help you create an editorial calendar so that you have a full view of all of your content across your organization and have everything in one place. 

Creating Your Content Plan

The first essential step to writing anything is brainstorming ideas, especially when starting to create your content plan. Rothman (2015) suggests analyzing industry trends and competitor content to see what others are offering or lacking. This will help you get a good idea of what your content should consist of. Once you are done brainstorming ideas, you can then start mapping out your content. This will help move your new buyers into becoming actual customers. 

Choosing your content type is the next step. Rothman provides many ways you can choose to present your content. For example:

• Blogs are fantastic for trend related content,and when you need to put out a point of viewat a very fast pace. 
• Cheat sheets are short pieces of downloadable content that are created to give the reader quick access to a series of tips or best practices.
•  A definitive guide is a very large content piece, often over 60 pages.
• An Ebook is an electronic version of a shortened book. 
• Infographics are generally vertical graphics that are short and easy to consume. 
• Reports often contain lots of statistics, a strong point of view.
• Videos are an engaging and visual form of live action content that can be filmed and promoted on youtube, social channels, and your website. 
• A webinar is either a live or recorded presentation that a speaker presents along with a slide deck. 

After you figure out which content type you are going to use, you can start crafting your plan and editorial calendar. The calendar will help align your team with the content strategy across your organization so that everyone knows what content is being created and when. 

Creating Your Content

Now that you have a plan in place, you can begin writing your content. By following these steps provided by Rothman, you should be able to effectively meet your desired results. 

Step 1)  Research your topic, either by a subject-matter expert in your organization who knows about your topic or yourself.

Step 2) Create an outline. It will keep you organized and on track with your content creation. Including the thesis in the outline will also help summarize the main point of the piece. 

Step 3) Write your first draft. Ensure that it flows well by including an introduction and conclusion. Rothman also suggests using bullet points and lists to help keep your writing structured organized and scannable. 

Step 4 ) Review your work. Look for structure, spelling and grammatical issues. Also, try to get 2 other people to review your work as each person may catch different mistakes.

Step 5) Write a second draft. Incorporate all the edits from the first draft, read it over a few times and make your final draft.

After completing your final draft you can then start designing your content. Regardless of the type of content you are using it should be clear, easy to read, colorful, and visually appealing. Rothman (2015) also suggests curating your content, which may include relevant articles or blog posts that work for your business, different industry “best of” lists, trend highlights, or news roundups.

Promoting Your Content

There are a few key steps to consider before actually promoting your content. One of the first things Rothman suggests to use is a gating strategy. This consists of collecting information on your customers by putting up a form in front of your content that customers have to fill out (Rothman, 2015). You can either gate all your content, gate only the assets that show buying intent when downloaded, or not gate any of your content.

You will then have to outline your promotion strategy. Rothman suggests using 4 keys steps to help you out. 

Step One) Create a strategy document. This should include: 

• What topic the content is created about 
• Who the audience is 
• The different goals that the content piece addresses.
• The thesis 
• The table of contents, if available. 
• The buying stage that the content was created for. 
• Any promotion suggestions that you or the team may have.

Step Two) Score your content. Scoring your content can help determine how close a person who downloads your content is to being a customer. 

Step Three) Meet with your stakeholders.  This will allow you to meet with your various promotional teams to go over goals and to describe to them what the asset is about and what it should be used for. 

Step Four) Create a promotion plan. Work with each team stakeholder to create an overall promotional plan for each asset. 

Step Five) Make your plan multichannel. Have your content on your website, social media or wherever your customers may be.

Now that you have your promotional strategy in place, you can then start to promote your content through a variety of different platforms that will help get your message and information across to your customers.

When merchandising content on your website, Rothman suggests having a resources section that is easy to navigate. She states that it should be categorized by key topics, should include visual images, and include forms for lead generation (Rothman, 2015). Having an engaging homepage is also beneficial in drawing customers to your content. You can also promote content on your website through banner ads and other images.

Social media is a great place to promote your content. There are a variety of social media platforms to choose from, for example, there is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.  All of these platforms allow you to post your content onto your company page and add visual content. Some platforms even allow you to promote your content through ads. Choosing the right platform can significantly help you promote your content. 

Using email is an efficient way to get your content right in front of your customers. It is most effective when the content in your email is scannable, engaging and brief. If you want to expand the reach of your content, you can try promoting it through content syndication. Content syndication involves placing your high-value content assets on a third-party website. This helps improve your search engine optimization and improve your brand exposure. 

Rothman also suggests using influencer marketing. This is a form of marketing that involves asking an influencer to share or blog about your content. It is a great way to increase the reach for your content assets. 

Not but not least we have the option of using pay-per-click ads to promote your content. This is another great way to expand your reach, especially if your ad is fun, visually appealing and engaging. Rothman brings up using search engine ads that appear on a search engine and are targeted based on keywords and audience. She also suggests banner ads which appear on various websites and are targeted based on demographics. Then there are retargeting ads that appears on a network of websites and are behavior based.

There are several ways to promote your content. Choosing the right promotion methods can greatly affect the engagement of your content.

Measuring Your Content

Defining your measurement goals can show you how effective the promotion of your content is. Rothman suggests determining what you are hoping to get out of your content piece in terms of measurement.  For example, it can be questions based on whether you were looking for social sharing or looking for increased traffic. Defining exactly what you are looking for in each piece will help you measure your content results. 

Now that you have your goals in place you can start tracking them with early-stage metrics. Rothman suggests to first look at the traffic to your site. This can give you information on how people are getting to the content, where people are going after they read your content, and what the top content assets are. You can also track your content downloads. This tells you when somebody downloads a content PDF via a click or a form. Tracking social engagement is also very important. This helps you determine how many people like, share, and comment on your posts. It also shows you the social follower increase. Overall, all these metrics show how engaging your content is. 

To track the revenue impact that your content has on your business, you need to use mid- and late-stage metrics. Rothman provides different metrics to track revenue. For example: 

• Lead Generation looks at how many leads are generated. It determines which content assets are bringing in net new people, and which content assets are more nurturing in nature. 
• Opportunity Generation. This shows how far an individual is from becoming a customer. 
• Revenue Generation. This measures how much money your content has generated for your business. First-touch means that your content was the initial thing that brought a lead into your system. Multi-touch tracks if your content has touched that lead throughout his or her life-cycle over time to become an opportunity.
• Paid Program Performance. This indicates how well your ads are doing, whether they are in the form of sponsored emails or pay-per-click ads.
• Sales Usage. This determines if sales are actually using content in your deals.  

Conclusion 

Overall Rothman has provided many great tips and suggestions on how to create effective content that is relevant and engaging to your audience. I used Rothman’s tip on using bullet points and lists and it has allowed me to keep my writing structured and organized. It also makes my writing scannable, which is important if readers prefer to skim over content to get a quick overview of what the writing is about. I also used another tip Rothman suggested which was to include an introduction and conclusion in my writing. This helped my writing flow from beginning to end. Rothman also continuously mentioned that any content you put together should be visually appealing and fun. For this reason, I included pictures throughout my writing to make it more vibrant and colourful. Do you think these tips are effective?

Well now that you have all the tips on how to create engaging content marketing, it is your turn to put it to use and see if it helps you attract more customers.   

References

Rothman, D. (2015). Content marketing foundation. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/Marketing-Lead-Generation-tutorials/Defining-understanding-importance-content-marketing/369044/386347-4.html