In our previous blog post we have introduced you to content marketing, what kind of content you can use and also User Generated Content. Now we want to look at your strategy a bit further.
What we are talking about is information sharing.
A Rutgers University research report that we share often throughout our training is about Meformers & Informers. The researchers found that only 20% of us are informers (users who post updates that are mostly information sharing) on social media while the other 80% are meformers (users who post updates that are mostly relating to themselves). However, Informers had more than twice as many followers as meformers, proving that sharing information is better for your follower count than sharing about yourself.
However, regardless of what brilliant pieces of content you have, you need to make sure you keep it in the context of what you are talking about, and aiming it at the right audience. We saw a great video recently of a father and son which without context would have looked completely out of place on our social media channels. By letting people know that the video was created with an app and who it was by, it created context for our audience, and gave reason as to why we shared it.
Having this approach in your content strategy is key. Other aspects of your strategy to consider are what makes you stand out from the crowd – in other words what is your USP? Think about your story and what people can learn from you.
It is also important to look at;
- Who are your users?
- Who are your competitors?
- What do you bring to the table?
- What do you hear?
- What content do you already have?
- What is the purpose of your content?
- How often should you publish & distribute content?
- Who is in charge or producing or maintaining your content?
Finding out who your audience is, is fundamental when understanding what content to put out. You probably already have a good idea of who your customer is, but if not there are a few ways to look into this. YouGovProfiles is a tool which collates a huge amount of data and gives demographics of a searched audience.
Looking at how your competitors approach their online activity will help you understand how to utilise yours. How are they interacting and engaging with their customers? What can you do differently? And how can you target your customer before they do?
By keeping up to date with current news and what others are talking about through listening on Twitter or using Google Alerts you can be right at the forefront of what is going on within your industry. Being able to talk about news as it happens keeps you as an influencer and therefore others will look to you to find out what they need to know.
Making a plan as to when and how to publish your content is important so that you know when to prepare and build that content (we will talk more about planning next time.) And if there are a number of you within your organisation it is important you have a voice that represents your company, and you are all clear as to who is in charge of distributing that content.
Storytelling
We have said it once but we will always keep saying it – you need to tell your story! What is that story? What will make people stop and think? What can you teach people? Working out what your story is and how you want to convey it is the first step in creating the persona you want to show your audience. Always be honest and authentic and give your customers a real taste of who you are and what you like.
Next time we help you find your content, store your content and then distribute it!