Here’s an AMAZING infographic that I found on content marketing. Content marketing is all about generating and sharing information with users. We’re living in an age of information where knowledge means power. Combine this trend with the potential of the internet and we have a winning combination for engaging customers with your brand.
Content marketing encompasses blogs, articles, social media, videos, infographics, and much more. In fact, the ways to spread information appear to be endless! Some of the latest tools include: Pinterest, Instagram, Visual.ly, and Contently. With so many options, how does a company choose which channels to communicate via?
1) Determine your objective for communicating – Do you want to increase sales for your product? Raise awareness? Generate brand preference? Discover what you want to achieve with your content marketing before you select your medium. On top of that, what is your message? Figuring out the message you want to convey should align with your positioning statement. Furthermore, ensure that your communication objective aligns with your business strategy. In other words, always keep the bigger picture in mind of what you are trying to accomplish.
2) Define your target audience – Who is intended to hear the message and see this communication piece? Equally important, who do you NOT want to view this media? Who you want to communicate to plays a significant role in how you communicate!
3) Describe the desired emotional or perceptual reaction or response – What do you want the target audience to feel or think after viewing the piece? Therefore when creating the content, keep in mind these perceptual goals to stay on track. A good way to check if you have accomplished your goal is to test your communication piece on a random sample; however this may not be necessary if you are simply sending out a quick Facebook wall post or Tweet. But always be aware with what content you post on social media as Scott Straten from UnMarketing warned, “It takes years to build a brand and one tweet to kill it.”
4) Consider your budget and resources – How much do you have to spend on creating the content? Consider materials costs, labour costs, media placement costs, and tracking and analytic costs.
5) Choose the channel that best accomplishes your objective – For example if your objective was to raise awareness for a new product that helps your hair grow longer within seconds, would your target audience be more receptive if you generated a research report on it or if you vlogged about it? Consider the previous four steps to help you figure this out!
6) Choose more than one channel! – The beauty of the internet is that many tools and platforms that can be used for marketing are free, if not offered at a substantially low cost compared to traditional channels. So go ahead and experiment! Consider using some platforms to supplement another medium. For example, using Facebook to repost a blog article that you wrote about your product.
7) Go viral – If you want to maximize the ROI on your communication piece, aim to create content that will likely go viral. What is the secret recipe for a viral content? According to Mashable the elements for a viral campaign include: interestingness, function, form, and integrity. This means that the content falls under at least some of the following criteria; it is meaningful, relevant, new, accurate, consistent, easy to share, useful, or visually beautiful. The stronger that users perceive your content to be this things, the more likely they are to share it with their network.
So that’s it! Now that you know how to select your communication medium for content, the best way to get started is to get out there and learn about all your options!
