Content Creation - time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, but we all feel a little rush of excitement when we publish a new piece of content, whether it is a new video, written blog, newsletter, opinion piece or social media post. It's hard work, undoubtedly, so making the most of it is paramount!
The first step is to sit back and enjoy that momentary rush of pleasure at seeing your hard work online and ready for people to read. The second step is to realise that publishing is really just the start of the process. Now you need to get your content out where it needs to go, share it with your audience and then measure the success of all your work.
So, what can you do?
You can build a solid but straightforward content distribution strategy by working with your team. To give you an example, you could post a response to some recent research, or you may want to share some of your own sector research. You may post about this and share a link on your company's LinkedIn page.
Your colleague could post a short blog or article post on their social media platforms linking to your website link and sharing the link to your company's LinkedIn page.
Another colleague could share either or both posts on their social media over a given timespan to help expand the reach and interest.
Already, you have three easy ways of distributing your business content. If done consistently, this simple method of sharing content will help you grow your reach, offer consistent and coherent messaging, and offer you a simple way of measuring the effectiveness of each content piece.
Once you hit that publish button, why not take the following steps and see how you benefit?
Notify your team members
Once you have identified those who are willing or best placed to help you push forward your promotional plan and who can share content on their own social media platforms or channels, think about who is the ideal person to help you with each type of content you may produce. For instance, those who may be best placed to help you promote a product or service launch may not be the best person to share a blog post.
For example, you have just published an article on your website. Now you can notify anyone in your content marketing team and everyone involved in the project you describe or want to promote. Give your team some pointers - a short overview, the relevant link and any images. You could give them each a unique shortened URL link (use Bitly or similar), or you could give them a unique UTM. (A UTM or Urchin Tracking Module is a simple code that can be attached to any URL to generate Google Analytics data for digital campaigns. Specific to Google Analytics, UTM helps track the campaign's progress on all online platforms.)
You need to be set up to do this, so to start with, it may be more acceptable to get people used to sharing and engaging with your content.
Whether your business is small or large, your key stakeholders will be - and not limited to:
Your sales or business development team
Project managers
Those supporting you with social media
Those creatives in your team - designers, writers or editors
The product marketing team, particularly if the content relates to a new product or service they are involved in
Anyone who works directly with customers and who may want to share the news with their specific contacts.
The accounts team who may see an uplift in spend as a result of the content exposure.
Any freelancers you work with - may be your designers, writer or videographers. Let them know the content is live so they can share it in their professional networks.
Any influencers or supporters you have - share the content link and overview with them, so you make it easy for them to push it out to their networks. Tag them in the post or share the details in the platform DMs.
Other staff - let them know by group email, TEAMs, Slack or Google Chat. Encourage them to share the latest news on their social platforms.
Push your content further.
There are so many ways you can push your content further as your team get used to making the most of everything you publish. Some companies will look at paid-for options, such as advertising or promoting unique content. Encouraging people to sign up for your newsletters is another way of ensuring your content gets to those who are most interested (subscribers) and those who may become more interested (social media contacts).
In certain situations, a combination of organic and paid-for social media works well, particularly if you are moving into a new audience, have a new product or service or want to build on what you already have. With paid media, you can have greater confidence that you are reaching your desired audience, as you can target specific users based on demographics and other data. Taking care of which content you promote and how will help you manage your budget most effectively - you can look at PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, influencer advertising, social media advertising, local online link ups or paid partnerships - such as advertising in your local papers or trade magazines.
Other options include re-packaging your content. Good examples of this re-packaging would be to turn an article based on your recently released research into an infographic, a podcast or a short video. You can break it down into bite-size pieces, share it on your social platforms, and add new hyperlinks and images to refresh it.
This approach will benefit you by:
Saving you time on consistently creating new content assets and gives you ammunition for your content calendar plan
It will expand the lifespan of your content marketing pieces and efforts.
It allows you to optimise it better, so it performs better.
It helps you cater to the different needs of your audience segments.
The final step is to:
Develop and launch your measurement plan.
There is very little point in doing all this work if you have not put in any means of measuring the success of each content piece.
Your KPIs will look different for building brand awareness, generating leads, driving sales, and retaining and re-engaging your customers.
You can develop your plan by looking at the key objectives for each piece within your overall marketing plan - is it to drive sales, re-engage your customer or create a broader awareness?
Identify your KPIs around key objectives and focus on the measurements which will give you the best analytical data for each goal.
Have fun and if you need any support or ideas, email me on info@bluelizardmaketing.com
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