How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and more) that Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
Discover why content is the new black.
What makes content so great? Content has always been a part of marketing, but it has recently gained new importance. So, what is this strange new content, and why is it attracting so much attention?
Following the explosion of social media, blogs, podcasts, and other platforms, content has emerged as one of the most significant ways businesses communicate with customers. The number of followers, the volume of information shared, and retweets have all become as crucial as sales data, brand recognition, and the bottom line.
So, how do you do it? Content Rules is a practical guideline for working with online content, and as you'll see, there are a lot of skills to learn.
In this summary, you will find
Golfer Charlie King used content to get through the recession in 2009.
How a Kodak executive used material for consumer interaction,
Using a calendar is the most effective technique to achieve outstanding outcomes from content.
1. Create online content that positions your organization as an information source and strengthens customer relationships.
Are Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram part of your daily routine? Well, you are not alone. Consumers have grown increasingly fond of social media since its spread over the last decade, even using the internet to study products and make purchasing decisions. Consumers do not, however, rely solely on social media sites for product information; they also consult company websites, blogs, and product reviews provided by other customers. So, how can your firm get the online attention it requires?
It all starts with content.
In a word, publishing content entails developing and uploading any information, including blog posts, videos, ebooks, and webinars. To be successful, your material must appeal to your target audience. Obnoxious marketing calls and postal advertising need to be updated; instead of approaching your clients, the new tactic is to entice them to come to you by providing material they enjoy.
How?
True stories about real people in everyday settings make for the most exciting and engaging material. For example, Procter & Gamble, the corporation behind the Pampers diaper brand, launched a "Welcome to Parenthood" video series on their website. The videos included genuine new parents detailing their daily routines, such as potty training, diaper changing, and nap preparations. Instead of simply selling diapers, the company offered experiences that new parents are genuinely interested in.
So, how do you show customers that you care?
Remember that content is an extension of your brand. It shapes clients' image of your company; it establishes credibility and encourages customers to trust you. This is because content, even with a large consumer base, may create one-on-one exchanges between your organization and its customers. Because your whole base sees your material, you're establishing one-on-one trust with each of them simultaneously. For example, the Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak, a $7.6 billion corporation, once contacted a single potential customer over Twitter and offered her product information.
2. Find your brand's voice, then identify your target audience and their demands.
Before you go on a Facebook posting spree, you should evaluate your brand's distinct voice and how your firm can help customers live better lives - because by building an individual company identity, your company can communicate with customers as if they were a single, actual person.
How?
First and foremost, write in a nice, conversational tone, using plain language that your clients can easily understand. You should avoid using common business jargon, as words like "synergy," "revolutionary," and "proactive drive" may turn clients off. Consider Charlie King, a PGA golfer and coach who began his New Rules of Golf blog in 2008. He provided free suggestions and explanations through videos and written postings on his site. His tone was pleasant and welcoming, emphasizing that golf did not have to be daunting or unapproachable.
You should not hesitate to make your posts humorous or personal. In truth, everyone enjoys humor and entertainment. Take the networking equipment giant Cisco Systems, whose router testimonial videos featured the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus singing praise songs.
Once you've established your company's brand, it's time to determine your target audience so that you can generate content that will appeal to them. Begin by asking yourself questions about possible audience groupings. Are they customers or prospects? How do we factor this into their product experience? How old are they? How about their professions? You will soon see a picture of your audience forming.
Now it's time to pick what they want.
Data-collection tools may help complete this assignment. For example, QuantCast.com offers anonymized statistics on traffic and demographics for millions of websites. You may also utilize services like Google AdWords and Wordtracker to uncover prevalent keywords linked to your business that consumers type into search engines.
3. Connect with customers by acquiring and sharing information via various social media channels.
So, you now have a brand identity. You've identified your target consumer and understand how to improve their lives. It's time to begin publishing.
It's best to start small by releasing and distributing easily created content while soliciting your audience's feedback. Starting a blog with a program like WordPress, TypePad, or Squarespace is simple, as is creating a Facebook, Twitter, or Yelp account. After establishing these social platforms, you may utilize them for various purposes.
For example, you could solicit feedback from your followers on a business-related topic and use the results to build a blog article. You might also create a video presentation of a company report, publish it, and promote it on your blog and social media profiles. Charlie King, a golfer, is another beautiful example: he began small but grew with time, creating new ways to engage. He eventually made a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn group, and an email newsletter. He also made additional content that he suited to specific groups. As a result, his company thrived during the recession of 2009!
However, creating new content regularly might take a lot of work; therefore, to interact with more people, you should also share the content of others. Material curation is a technique for extending your own material. For example, you can use sites like Eqentia, Lingospot, and Loud3r to find intelligent, real-time material from across the web by searching for keywords.
Another content technique is to urge customers to share true stories about how your product has impacted their lives. It's called user-generated content (UGC), and it encourages customers to participate. For example, Ford Motor Company lets consumers share their tales on the Ford Social website. As a result, one customer published an essay about how touched she was by Ford's special Mustang edition, which raises funds and awareness for breast cancer.
4. Share your content whenever and wherever possible, and make it easy for others to do the same.
Okay, so you've created some engaging content for your audience. Now it's time to encourage others to share it because sharing content promotes your brand and keeps your audience engaged and interested. So, how do you get shares?
The first step is to display your social media sharing buttons on websites and blogs prominently. This allows anyone who likes your post to share it on their own account. ShareThis.com, for example, will enable you to add a single share button that links to many social networks. But, before distributing your work, license it and provide guidelines for how others might use it. Consider whether you mind when people change your content. How about using it for commercial purposes?
When you're ready to share, start contemplating shareable formats that can be readily incorporated on other websites. For example, you can allow your audience to download articles or presentations in PDF and PowerPoint formats.
However, specific platforms are more suitable for sharing than others. For example, Twitter allows users to share in real time, pushing others to examine and share their posts as soon as possible. Twitter's micro postings (or tweets) have a maximum length of 140 characters, allowing you to update your followers anytime.
So, what constitutes a good tweet?
A fascinating tweet is a headline that captures the reader's attention; it's punchy, witty, and even amusing. Superlatives, weird analogies, and forceful assertions, such as "Is there an "Activia" for the mind?" are adequate tweeting strategies. My brain is experiencing periodic irregularities."
Once you have a Twitter account, users can subscribe to your feed to receive your most recent tweets and retweet your messages to reach a larger audience. Once you've mastered tweeting, you may add videos, photographs, and links to your existing content to make them more engaging!
5. Create a calendar to systematically develop, monitor, and repackage your content.
Do you know how personal calendars help you recall meetings, birthdays, and other critical events while minimizing overbooking? Calendars, however, are as crucial for content publishing. Because if you want to prosper, you must keep track of all the media you create.
You will need a systematic plan known as an editorial calendar to coordinate and manage your many media platforms. Consider appointing a Chief Content Officer (CCO) to oversee your editorial schedule and maintain track of your content agenda and strategy. Your CCO should create daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly content agendas outlining what you intend to publish and review.
For example, your daily routine might look like this: provide breaking news updates on Twitter and Facebook and respond to blog comments. Your weekly agenda could include writing a brief blog post or how-to article and updating the website. Your monthly schedule could consist of writing an in-depth piece about a customer success story, creating and sending a newsletter, creating a podcast, and contributing to another publication. In the long run, your quarterly calendar might look like this: publish a white paper, a collection of case studies, and create a video series.
How will you keep to your content calendar and produce everything you desire now that you've created it?
Repackaging current material into other forms, sizes, and channels is one technique to make content production easier. For example, reimagine a blog post as a short video or podcast interview.
Alternatively, you might share a customer's success story on your website and Facebook. Repackaging allows each information to be displayed individually in search results, enhancing visibility. For example, Kinaxis, a supply chain management company, implemented a well-organized content publication system that included Twitter, blogs, and videos.
What was the result?
Their web-based sales leads increased thrice in a year!
6. Metrics are important: define explicit and measurable targets and use keywords strategically.
As you can see from the editorial timetable, content publishing is a continuous process. Measuring your performance and using web-based tools to enhance weak areas is critical. Here is how to start:
Begin by establishing measurable targets and follow-ups in your editorial schedule. Tracking your content's performance allows you to constantly update and enhance it. For example, you could create a video that receives 1,000 views monthly. Alternatively, you may persuade ten bloggers to write good reviews about your company. Keep note of your accomplishments as you set and seek to attain goals, but remember your failures - because when you fail, you need to know why.
However, there are some techniques to help you improve your general internet visibility, such as leveraging keywords and producing creative material. This will simplify location search engines such as Google, which most people use when looking for information online. To be fully seen, your material must rank high in search results.
How does ranking work?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a method that raises your site's ranking in search results based on how unique your content is and how many inbound links you have. Original content is essential since it encourages sharing, increasing visibility among search engine users interested in you and your goods.
However, keywords can help you rank higher in search engines, so choose wisely. Long tail keywords, or phrases of distinct keywords, are an effective technique. Long tail keywords are helpful since they are more relevant to your product and thus more valuable. One long-tail keyword tactic is to compose inquiries about difficulties. For example, "How Do I Install a Swimming Pool?"" is far more effective than simply "swimming pools."
7. Create bespoke content for corporate customers to meet their specific requirements.
The fundamental ideas you've studied thus far apply to developing content for all organizations, regardless of size or industry; however, if your company specializes in business-to-business (B2B) trade, there are a few details to consider.
Why?
Because business buyers are typically advised by committees that perform extensive product studies. As a result, the time it takes to complete a transaction, generally known as the buying cycle, might be months. As a result, establishing a relationship with your clients is critical to keep them interested during this lengthy decision-making process.
However, businesses have distinct needs, just like individuals, and it is still critical to provide content that engages them while anticipating their inquiries and providing helpful information. The only difference is that this process occurs on a broader, longer-time scale.
So, what constitutes a good strategy?
One approach is to create a spreadsheet that maps all potential questions and concerns that individual buyers within a committee may have. To do so, study studies from marketing-data services such as TechTarget can provide insight into how huge firms make purchasing decisions. Identifying the demands of individual buyers is critical for keeping them engaged from start to finish.
However, that is one of many ways B2B content strategy differs; it should establish particular goals to help customers navigate purchasing. To do this, your content should relate to a short-term aim and your company's long-term business strategy. For example, a short-term aim would be to get 100 website visitors to sign up for a webinar or web seminar, and a longer-term goal might be to use webinars to increase sales from your website traffic.
Remember, the notion of reimagining existing content through repackaging is still valid. The main difference is that your repackaged material should address your business clients' specific concerns. For example, you may create a kit with information worksheets, client success stories, and webinars to help prospective business customers learn more about your organization.
Final Summary
Creating appealing content necessitates highlighting the human side of your business. This entails identifying your own voice and speaking to your audience about topics that are important to them. By delivering valuable information and unique ideas, your customers will trust your content and, as a result, you.
Practical advice: Instead of remembering to "always be closing," try "always be listening."
Producing attention-grabbing content relevant to your clients requires talking and listening. Stay updated with the newest news using programs such as Google Reader, Google Alerts, and Search.Twitter.com. You can't submit it if you don't recognize it!