The content marketing world is built around people.
Content marketing is very different from traditional marketing. If you enter this world equipped with old tools and follow obsolete processes, you’re in for a surprise.
It simply doesn’t work like that. You can either learn it the hard way, or take into account some of the lessons I’ve learned while experimenting with this new and exciting field.
Perfect May Not Be Good Enough
Yes, you can write the perfect piece of content, SEO optimised with the right keywords and include the most wonderful pictures that you can find. Still, it won’t do you much good if it doesn’t reach your audience. Therefore, put the same amount of effort into distributing the content as you do in writing it. Remember that in order for it to serve the needs of your audience, it should reach that audience first. Here are some tips in this direction:
- Find niche communities.
- Include sharing buttons.
- Get personal on LinkedIn & Twitter.
- Consider email marketing.
- Leverage the power of guest blogging.
People Come Before Sales
People first, sales second because without people, there would be no sales. Actually, without people there would be nothing. Use content marketing to get one step closer to your audience and build long term relationships based on trust. This will definitely help you close more sales, but most importantly, it will help you turn your customer base into advocates, which is priceless!
Content Comes Before Marketing
Always put relevant content first and marketing messages last! If you can’t understand this, don’t be surprised when your customers choose to leave. When writing content, don’t think of ways of including marketing messages to be perceived at a subliminal level, but rather think of how you can actually help your audience by educating them through relevant content. Subliminal messages are everywhere and people are beginning to feel tired of all the hidden information. Dare to be different and your customers will love you for it.
Long Does Not Equal Valuable
“The longer, the better” does not apply to the content marketing world. Here, it’s not about length, it’s about quality and the degree to which the content can help solve your Buyer Persona’s problems and answer his/ her questions. I’ve read so many long blog posts without substance that I’ve really grown fond of shorter, more concise posts. And believe it or not, it’s actually more difficult to write a shorter article than a longer one. For a shorter article, you need to synthesise all of the information and choose only what is truly relevant. It’s like serving the best of the best to your audience.
Empathy, Empathy, Empathy…
Although brands usually have a well thought commercial agenda, they should use empathy and learn to put their audience first. In doing so, they build deeper engagement with their audiences. The whole idea is to sell less in order to sell more. And that starts with giving to get. It starts with empathy.
That’s about it for my take on content marketing so far. If you have any other learnings that you’d like to share, please post them in the comments.
Images source: Pixabay
