Introduction
Digital content is everywhere. Beyond the “website”, new tools for consuming and creating this content continue to appear all the time – blogs, social media outposts, tablets and smart phones are just a few recent examples. Meanwhile, consumers, along with business customers and prospects, show no signs of fatigue in their readiness to embrace these new technologies. Increasingly, people not only research products and services online before making a purchase but, also fulfill a wide array of content and communication needs via digital outlets, querying Facebook friends for recipe suggestions and following their favorite bloggers for news that‟s relevant to them. Most companies have recognized these changes and are investing in developing digital content, such as corporate blogs and video. Often, however, these same companies are missing valuable opportunities to drive engagement, conversion and revenue from their digital content because they’re lacking a well-rounded content marketing strategy and the proper tools to push out relevant content across a variety of platforms. Such capabilities, however, are must-haves if you want to effectively connect with customers and prospects in the information age.
There are many reasons why companies don’t treat content as the critical business asset it is. Maybe a firm already has a blog and distributes press releases, so its executives assume there is a content strategy. There isn’t. Or maybe, a marketing director figures that because everyone and their grandmother has a blog, it must be easy to create Web content. Yes, just about anyone can put up a blog. You can create one dedicated to green silk scarves with tassels, if that’s what you’re interested in. But, developing content that people want to read makes you a trusted and respected source in your industry and keeps people coming back to your website over and over, isn’t so easy.
“Everybody has the ability to be a publisher in a Web 2.0 world,” says Becki Dilworth, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Bridgeline Digital. She points to the ease and low cost of online publishing via blogs, videos, podcasts, forums and social networks as evidence. “However, those brands that really think about what kinds of content will be most appealing to their audience, in what format and where they want to consume it, are going to be the most successful going forward,” she states.
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and author of the just published (November 2010) Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts,Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business ( www.contentrulesbook.com), agrees: Companies “need to refocus their content efforts on producing compelling content that will attract customers to them, and will truly engage them.”
Content Marketing Management
So, what exactly is a content strategy? It’s sitting down with the various stakeholders in a company – this could be IT, Web strategy, marketing and business development – and developing a plan for how to create, publish and manage digital content. To do this, you’ll first need to understand what kinds of content will be most appealing to a brand’s audience segments and where they are most likely to want to consume it.
The really savvy marketers are taking content strategy a step further, using content management and Web analytics tools, like those available in Bridgeline’s iAPPS Product Suite, to help deliver relevant content experiences along every step of a customer’s or potential customer’s interaction with a brand. This is called Content Marketing Management and it can help establish trust, build authority and, ultimately, create opportunities to convert browsers and visitors into buyers.
Companies are also discovering that a content marketing strategy is an important way to create impressions especially as the role of traditional mass media continues to erode.
According to recent research from Hubspot, companies that blog have more website visitors, more inbound links and more indexed pages than companies that don’t. And this applies to companies that also update their website content more frequently. This means more opportunities to get noticed.
“Your customers read blogs, they Google their purchases and they query followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook,” says Handley. “They are always educating themselves by researching purchases online before they make them. This means, of course, that your key to igniting sales is to create online content and optimize it so that it appears on the first page of search results when your customers search for you or the products or services you sell,” Handley continues.
But, a good content marketing strategy can do much more than improve your natural search rankings. Just follow the 10 steps, to be posted tomorrow in Part II, for building and implementing a content marketing strategy, and you’ll be on your way to engaging customers, driving conversion and increasing revenue, all through the use of well-conceived and executed content.
Tomorrow: Part II – The Top 10 Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Strategy
For more information please visit: http://www.bridgelinedigital.com/landing/content-revolution-tour