
This past week I was working on a digital marketing proposal for a client. A key element of this plan, or any plan that I’d put together is content: creating good content drives just about any avenue. And bad content won’t be saved by any of them.
Content factors break easily down into the old “Who, What, Where, When and Why”.
Millennials like to say they’re changing marketing by demanding that it be relevant. As a long-time marketer, my take? It’s always been necessary to make marketing relevant — at least if you wanted to be any good at it. When it comes to making content shareable this is a huge measurement of relevancy. What is relevant gets shared.
- Know your audience and understand what they expect you to talk about. If you’re reading this blog or follow me on social media, you know I like to talk about marketing fundamentals and how to integrate them into today’s vehicles. My social media shares tend to be things that I like and believe in.
- What do you expect your reader to do based on the information? Generally, I think of social media as my public relations. I don’t expect this blog or that Tweet to convert to a $7k per month retainer (but a girl can dream, eh?) Rather my social media is how I relate to all you and hopefully establish myself as an expert in your minds and hearts.
- When is the right time to share? This is where your forecasting comes in handy. In all likelihood your business has some level of seasonality to it. For me, marketing budgets are set in 3rd and 4th quarters and plans are in place by May or June. Meaning if I’m not in the door in the next few weeks, I won’t see a return until 2016.
- How can your content help me? It’s no secret that readers are much more likely to click and share if your headline includes words like “Top 10 Lists” or “6 Steps to ____”. We’re all busy and we need help from people we think have good ideas and effective solutions.
When it comes to writing your content keep in mind that most content comes in one of 3 flavors
1. Motivate: Inspiration loves Company We love to be inspired. If I had a dollar for every motivational quote in my collective newsfeeds, well, let’s just say the retainer mentioned above wouldn’t need to be as big. Sometimes motivation for marketers comes in the form of making a sale (yep, sometimes). So leverage your content to help create or cement a need within your readers’ minds.
2. Educate: Keep, Stop, Start In doing my research for this blog I looked back over my personal shares and nearly all of them intend to help someone learn something. Start using an online app to raise money for pet shelters when you walk your dog, stop eating processed food, keep promoting the good deeds of my favorite political candidate. I share what I care about. So do your customers.
3. Entertainment and Current Events Last week when the royal princess was born, I was a bit irritated that no one had shared this. It was Saturday morning and I hadn’t turned on the TV yet, but of course I’d checked my various news feeds, probably more than once if the truth be told. There was no mention of this sweet new baby girl for nearly 2 hours! Imagine that?!?! If you’re like me, we expect our news to be everywhere, quickly. And if you can’t be first, you need to be unique.
The secret sauce: combine these flavors — a neapolitan social media strategy if you will — and you’ll hit the emotional sweet spot! Remember the inspirational story of the man who walked an extreme distance to or from work? It was a social media trend topic that THEN became a current event. Presto!
Would love to see your content ideas. Tweet me @jrfoster75231 or post your comments below.