Does Content Live in a Silo? Hell NO!

The whole marketing industry is going crazy behind Content Marketing these days. But what actually content marketing is? Does it make sense to say that it’s a strategy to use content for great marketing results. But that’s not what it is.

Content does NOT live in silo. It only fetches results for businesses when used in combination with other marketing channels and innovative marketing practices. It’s one of the planets of the vast inbound marketing solar system. Confused? Read further.

Content can fall flat on its face (or be ineffective)  if NOT used with:

SEO – Many marketers think content marketing is all about creating more content and the easiest way to do that is through regular blogging. However even great content can deliver no value, if it goes unnoticed or if your target audiences are not able to find it. SEO is a surefire way to ensure that your remarkable content gets found and read by the right set of people i.e., your target audiences. Marketers should ensure that the helpful content that they create must be optimized well for keywords used by their target audiences to locate certain products or services on search engines. That’s how content attracts organic traffic.

Social Media – With social media euphoria gripping humans across all age groups, geographies and business sectors, almost every brand wants to tap this huge real estate and engage with their target audiences across varied social media channels. For enhanced content reach and visibility, it needs to be distributed imperatively across relevant social media sites (only those where your target market hangs out frequently). Popular social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. are the online avenues, where readers love to share the infotaining content that you create. Hence as a smart marketer, make it easy for them to do so by integrating social media sharing buttons in each content piece that you push out on the Web. Not only does it increase your content’s reach or effectiveness, but can also help you engage with your target audiences easily and help them address their challenges with your useful content. If your content succeeds in solving their challenges/pain points, no wonder these readers can also become your brand evangelists. So keep feeding them with awesome content on their most favorite online destinations!

Email marketing – Some businesses see email marketing as the most powerful tool in their marketing arsenal to connect with their contact database. Email can really help your content get out there and grab many more eyeballs. Without email marketing, your content’s reach is constrained drastically and can make all your content creation efforts go waste.

It’s damn simple. Content forms the beating heart of your inbound marketing strategy but ONLY when it’s used along with other channels (a few of them listed above!). Don’t sandbox your content. Give it wings and let it soar high and wide to cover the complete horizon of your target audiences.

 

 

 

Why Inbound Marketing? Why Now?

Having spent good 8 years in online marketing domain and worked with multinational companies of high repute and also dozens remote service buyers, I can say with authority that Inbound Marketing Methodology is here to stay.

With all the digital noise around and benefits of embracing inbound marketing being thrown in the faces of marketers day-in and day-out, companies seem to be inclined towards adopting it but largely suffer from the lack of patience required to let inbound do its magic and yield results. Without team, budget and other resources required to build a good inbound marketing team and cultivating content culture within the company, most CMOs seem to be in a rush to see skyrocketing figures on metrics charts from the word “GO”. I know, I know, there’s lots of pressure from the top but believe it or not, inbound does take time, indeed lots of time. Why? Simply, because it does not treat Customers as entries in the CRM or marketing contacts databases. It focuses on talking to customers as HUMANS and triggering interactions not between brands and customers, but HUMANS and HUMANS across both the sides of the conversation. And, you know good HUMAN relationships do take time to get built and nurtured.

Back to the blog title – Why Inbound, why now?

Gone are the days when as a marketer, you could be inconsiderate to interrupt your audiences anytime, anywhere with your cold calls, cold emails (better to call them SPAMS), annoying ads, etc. This was the outbound or tradition way of marketing, which has now gotten replaced with new-age marketing or INBOUND MARKETING, which is customer centric and that uses content as a beacon to attract audiences and help them find your brand on their own. That’s why we call it “inbound” after all. 

Customers or buyers are more connected and informed than ever. Most of them have already researched well before they find your brand to connect with. So they will make their purchase decisions, whether you reach them or not. So, it’s best to adopt a marketing strategy that acts like a magnet and help them find you while they are aggressively researching for solutions to their problems/needs.

Here it’s important to know that to formulate a successful inbound marketing strategy, you got to know your target audiences, really really well before you empower them with information or means to find your brand and engage with your products/services.

1. Create Buyer persona
2. Study Buyer Journey
3. Create remarkable, helpful content
4. Leverage that content

It’s not enough to create great content. It’s equally important to get that content out in the world. Content distribution adds context to your content. And, content + context = successful inbound marketing. Right?

More about Inbound Marketing in my next blog…….Stay tuned!

Top Tips for Effective Content Curation

Flurry of excitement about content curation in the online industry. Many B2B and B2C companies have queued up for spreading their reach through this digital channel. Only a few ones are able to hit the nail?

If you wish to play long innings on the online marketing landscape, you need to brush off your old marketing concepts. Throw away the thought that you’d publish some content on the Web, and there’d be a natural in-flow of trackbacks, social shares, inbound links, page views and all of that. Don’t give that amazed look if you observe some silent returns on your publishing exercise.

Content Curation: Spread your Story Naturally

For a swashbuckling digital marketing reach, remember the golden rule – Create fresh, remarkable and relevant content. With all social media marketing platforms at your disposal, it’s all the more an easy task now, provided you know the way to do it right.

Here are some tips for you that can help you cut through the entire hullabaloo and make sure your content spreads naturally and effectively on the World Wide Web.

Avoid being overly experimental.

What’s that? Don’t tax yourself by fiddling too much with the approach every time you pen down your content. Analyze your past content trends and figure out some sweet content spots. Evaluate which types of content have fetched you the maximum number of likes, shares, comments and links. Now go for some serious, smart work. Try to replicate this success and create a fresh editorial calendar based on content analytics.

Ignite emotions. Shock your people (I mean your target audiences). Shoot content that delights, frightens or even annoys them. Do you know what content goes viral? That ignites strong emotional reactions in your readers. Why? It kindles some key emotions like sadness, happiness, wrath or even disgust in them. This steers social sharing and hence increases reach of your content on the Web. So, now is the time for you to consider creating some emotion-evoking content.

Hammer a captivating headline. Though a bit startling, social media referrals generate the most traffic for a website now. It’s the new SEO on board. The more is the social sharing of your content, more is the opportunity generated for you to get found online. How can you arrest the attention of your readers in the first place? An engaging headline would do the magic and lure your readers to click and spread your content in their networks. Now, what constitutes a good headline? A title that’s unique, relevant, thought-provoking, and contains some surprise value for your readers.

Love social media. In this inbound marketing age, you can’t overlook social media platforms and form a content strategy, devoid of these key elements. Marry your content with social media. Do remember to embellish your content with multi-media ingredients as these are rewarded greatly on such platforms in the form of shares and engagement.

Content Curation: Get your Story the potent SEO juice

Turn your blog into a social media marketing machine. Use your blog’s real estate to showcase your content and ask for feedback from your readers, which will eventually help you refine your product further. A fine-tuned product, tailored to target audiences’ expectations, has multiplied scope of recommendations and henceforth, virality.  Don’t forget to incorporate social media sharing and blog subscription widgets on to your blog. Publish relevant and engaging posts and see the charm of social media sharing.

So let your target audience give a rousing reception to your content on the Web. Get started with spreading your great content naturally.