TechAcute is a blog and yet we participate in content marketing. That doesn’t mean that we drive evil psychological strategies to bait you to click our articles. This just means that all the authors here at TechAcute put a lot of effort into their writing and it would be a pity if nobody saw their articles, right? We are no marketing blog either (in case you’re no regular reader), but to a degree we all have to market ourselves and our work. So what is content marketing exactly about?
What is Content Marketing?
Content can be pretty much anything digital or in the real world. Content is one of the cornerstones of modern marketing strategies, whether it’s for yourself or for your company. This article here is content and when we post it on Facebook or Twitter, that is content marketing by leveraging social networks. If you are looking to solve a particular problem, usually you will start your search in a search engine like Google. Other will ask their connections in their social networks. If you leverage this demand for information you can offer your content as possible solution with an proactive engagement or make sure that your content can be found easily on Google. Whether you try to advertise your opinion, experience, product or service is not relevant for the process.
What would be a good real-life example for content marketing? Costco, for instance, releases a free cookbook (digital copy) full of recipes every year. Why are they doing that? Doing the editorial work, publishing and distributing these cookbooks is a lot of work and costly, when there is no direct monetary compensation for the product. Maybe you have to think beyond the here and now, beyond the instant pay for a product and look for long term value add. With the cookbook they are helping their customers. They increase the customer loyalty to the brand and if customers share the cookbook with their friends, they also extend the brand awareness beyond their core customers. Thinking about this, it feels a little bit like sharing on social media platforms, doesn’t it?
4 Ps, 3 As and 3 Cs of Content Marketing
PAC for the win – Some of you might feel like “Yeah, I’ve seen this before… here and there..” but why not reduce the important steps to compact learning bites? Of course each of these steps could fill books and they probably already do, but if you’re not studying marketing theory then maybe you’ll appreciate the compact format.
- Plan your content strategy.
- Produce content according to strategy.
- Promote content through adequate channels.
- Perfect your strategy by assessing results and starting over.
- Align your objectives by determining what you want to achieve.
- Assemble your team and define roles and responsibilities.
- Act on the plan any carry it out.
- Collaborate among your teams and team members.
- Communicate your progress, status and challenges for a better outcome.
- Compromise if necessary and focus on achieving the objectives.
If you consider these steps, your campaign will be on a good path. There’s no success guarantee and there’s no shared common sense but even a little structure helps a lot more than following no structure at all. Whatever you do, make sure your content is insightful, not boring and marketing-god-forbid, don’t praise your product or yourself like there’s no competition at all in this whole wide world. Tell a story instead and be authentic!
Internal Communication
Communicating efficiently within your organization, across teams and with stakeholders as well, can go a long way. If you share information beyond need-to-know basis, people can stay informed about everything that is happening around them and maybe you can leverage content for multiple purposes. If you are working with distributed remote teams, you could think about using an enterprise social network to collaborate and communicate better.
What does a content marketer do?
Let’s start with a basic definition from Wikipedia: “Staying ahead of the consumer is an important part of a marketer’s job. It is important to understand the marketing environment in order to comprehend the consumers concerns, motivations and to adjust the product according to the consumers needs.“
So what about content marketers? They take care of things such as..
- … Identifying the audience.
- … Informing and engaging with audience.
- … Producing content and add value.
- … Managing and coordinating marketing campaigns.
- … Driving results by achieving measurable objectives.
Are you a content marketer and feel we missed something? Please share your thoughts below in the comment section. Many thanks for reading!
Further Reading
Photo credit: Ignacio Serapio / Bruno Glätsch / StokPic / 小平 郝
