Content is an important facet in marketing and creating awareness for your products services and or other communication goals. And content is a very simple concept, it’s really about creating information that is valuable to the audience that would need, want, or aspire to your to your product or service. Because it is through the dissemination of information that we can start to build value, mind share, and awareness with our audience. This is where content marketing comes into play. Content marketing includes things like blogs, articles, newsletters, videos, and other similar content that provide customers with interesting and helpful information to make an informed decision.
Content is marketing, the act of creating content is the act of marketing and advertising. In fact, any dissemination of a message involves creating content and consequently everything that we do to create awareness for our brand, product, and or service is content creation whether that be television advertising, radio advertising, or digital marketing. In order to be effective, we have to understand the values of our audience, engage the right medium to reach our audience, and keep our content relevant for the intended audience.
Know Who Exactly Your Target Audience Is
When creating content and targeting a message to an audience, the key crucial information is to have an idea and understand who the audience is. Simply, it is only from this understanding, that it is possible to create any information that would be relevant and receptive to the intended audience. For instance if you were selling Harley Davidson motorcycles, it’s a good idea to delve into the history of the brand, the history of motorcycles in general and other aspects of that particular product, it would not make sense to describe or develop content for bicycles.
As a company with products or services, you likely already have a general idea of who your target is. But, you want to be perfectly sure about who you are aiming your content marketing at. The more closely you target a specific group of people, then the easier it will be to attract a dedicated audience to consume the content being created. There are a number of ways to help gain a better understanding of what your target market is, including performing marketing research to understand your niche, Google Analytics and social media insight reports.
Choose the Right Theme
The theme of content is also another important component of content that is relevant, engaging and informative for the intended audience. The structure of content dissemination should allow you to generate ideas that engender a rounded and holistic view of the product service and or brand. The goal here is to help a prospect or an audience gradually grasp a 360º view of the content subject. And within that paradigm, you can really develop content around many different aspects of the subject and employ themes.
A theme boils down to a pattern of content creation. So for instance if you sold Harley Davidson motorcycles, a theme could be content focusing on the customers who already own the particular motorcycle and highlighting their stories with the product. Another theme trajectory, could be highlighting the various aspects of the history that makes Harley Davidson the brand that it is. Or perhaps developing content that highlights the performance of the product. From this perspective, theming becomes an invaluable tool that can support the development of myriad content ideas.
Keep Content Relevant and Interesting
Consider what your audience will want to know and find relevant; if you are not entirely sure, hit your social media to ask them directly about what content they would find interesting and helpful. Perform market research to understand the values and beliefs of your audience so that you can create the right information for them. The importance of keeping content relevant and interesting is not to be understated, however this too is a relatively easy undertaking. If the audience is defined and the right theme is employed for that audience, the combination of getting those to write will equal content that your audience will most likely find relevant to their interests and interesting.
The diversity of content output, and enlightening different facets of a product, service, and or brand, generates not only informative content, but in the very nature of highlighting the different facets of an object, creates relevancy that will grab the attention of an audience interested in the product, service, or brand.
Use the Right Distribution Channels
Finally, the medium employed to disseminate content is the last major factor to consider. Depending on your audience demographics, one or two distribution channels may stand out above all the rest. Like with picking your target audience, you can employ analytic tools like Google analytics to determine how your audience best connects with you and your content in general. Anything from a blog, newsletter, video series, or email service can stand out as your best option.
This is just a small look into content marketing. If you want to improve your customer relations and even grow your following, it is a great method to consider. Just remember content needs to be interesting, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. And, if done right, content marketing can make a major difference in how well you interact with your audience and how many people you reach.
