Many people have only a vague idea of what content marketing is despite that fact that they may be making use of it already. This marketing avenue makes use of media to publish content in order to acquire new customers. This content can include how-to guides, infographics, e-books, videos, news and so on. Content marketing can also be split into three sections, namely your content (for example, developing original content for publications), market content (competitor content and content specifically made for helping customers falls under this section) and customer content (like building and telling customer stories). Seeing as content marketing has such a wide definition, there are many ways in which it can be implemented in a productive and smart manner. In this article we look at six basic content marketing strategies that have the tendency to work most of the time with some examples of how they are being utilised.
Twitter recommendations
Sites like a small orange (http://www.asmallorange.com) searches for mentions of their name on the social media site Twitter and then posts these on their website as tiny testimonials to their good service. Of course, customers are given the benefit of being mentioned on their sites and in turn you get good marketing.
Humor provides help for customer problems
Humor can come in handy when dealing with customers as it provides them with the feeling that you are not merely a faceless brand but an entity with a personality that they can relate to. Tom Fishburne (“The Marketoonist”) has made use of his skills as a cartoonist to offer a service where companies pay him to create content marketing cartoons based on consumer case studies. This way you can focus on problems that have occurred in the past and then show the solution in a humorous manner via the use of cartoons.
Infographics
The use of infographics have surged in the last year or two. It is a great way of creating interest in a topic that people may not take interest in if it were organized into an article or blog post. Creating an infographic is not something reserved for “creatives”. It is as simple as choosing a topic, doing some research on the topic, finding relevant statistics and using an online resource such as Easel.ly (http://www.easel.ly) that helps you create online graphics with no experience needed at all. Infographics will grab the attention of those people who do not have the time or inclination to read long pieces of text but could still find the information useful.
Create a weekly webinar
A webinar can best be described as online workshops or discussion forums that can be viewed by people in remote locations that are not connected to each other, similar to a conference call. Of course, these webinars are live so it will require some preparation on your side as well as having the knowledge to carry an event. It can be done through sites like GoToMeeting (http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/webinar) that handle the invitations to and registrations of the people who will be attending the webinar session. You can easily organize an event for hundreds of people from your PC and you often do not need extra equipment to be able to do so. One of the advantages of hosting a webinar is that the people that register for your webinar can be added to your mailing list in future so that additional content can be sent to them regarding the webinar or other pieces of information (with their permission, of course).
Newsjacking
Newsjacking involves keeping an eye on the latest topics that are trending and then using that topic in a blog post to relate to the content you are writing about. This helps to land your blog post or article on the front pages of any person keeping an eye on the news. The problem with newsjacking is to find a topic that makes sense in your industry because simply using it as a topic with no correlation to what you’re writing about will have people catching on to your blatant marketing strategy.
Showcase your company in a video
Making a video for your company does not necessarily need to be professional or about a specific product or service. Yes, it is beneficial to create demo videos and the like but one can delve deeper into your company culture and activities with videos that your employees create. Not only does it provide a face to your brand but it gets your name out there in an unusual way. Zappos.com creates videos on their Inside Zappos channel that not only showcases their latest products but also what the people behind Zappos get up to and how they use their products creatively.
