In the latest content marketing news this Thursday, learn how to deliver the right content, personalized to your audience without acting like a total creeper. Assess the state of content marketing and see how your strategy stacks up. Finally, figure out what’s slowing down your fast-moving content.
Are You Sweet-Talking Your Audience?
New Research Reveals That More Than Half of Marketers Are Not Delivering the Right Content via MarTech Series
When it comes to messaging in your content marketing strategy, there’s a big difference between saying what you want to say and talking about things your audience actually wants to hear. It doesn’t matter how much content you generate. If it’s the wrong content, no one will consume it.
In their recent article, MarTech Series looks at studies on content marketing, content strategy, and how marketers create and implement their marketing campaigns. While the studies found that a vast majority of marketers at least have a documented content strategy, the article also points out that only 22% of marketers develop campaigns based on specific customer personas and only 15% tailor content to a customer journey map, rendering many campaigns ineffective. Read the full article to learn more about what you can do to make sure you deliver content that your audience actually wants to consume.
Hello, This Is the Internet. I’m Listening.
How to Make Your Content Personalized but Not Creepy via Content Marketing Institute
You have a thought about Britney Spears, maybe a conversation, or maybe you actually search for news about her. Pretty soon, Britney’s in your social media, playing through Alexa, she’s on your phone, in your news feed, on your work computer, and on all the billboards near your regular commute. Just kidding, but also not kidding. It turns out the internet’s not that innocent. You’ve likely had similar experiences with any item you’ve ever searched for, finding that the content you see after the initial search is somehow related. This is no coincidence, and there’s a fine line between whether personalized content is perceived as convenient or creepy.
According to this article from Content Marketing Institute, 72% of consumers choose only to engage with personalized content, while simultaneously 86% of consumers say that they have concerns regarding data privacy. To find your audience’s content personalization sweet spot, take a look at Content Marketing Institute’s advice that aims to help you make personalized content without coming off like a stalker ready to invade your customers’ privacy.
See How Your Content Strategy Stacks Up
The State of Content Marketing 2019 (Infographic) via Digital Information World
Do you ever feel isolated in your marketing efforts? Do you wonder what the competition is doing, what your neighbors are doing, and whether your strategy is on the right track?
Now, you can see how you stack up with this easy-to-read infographic from Digital Information World. Take a look to find out what thousands of marketers around the world had to say about content marketing and their successes and struggles in this modern age of digital media.
We Like to Move It, Move It (It Being Content)
Distribution Dilemmas? 10 Ways to Effectively Move Your Content via WriterAccess
An awful lot of work goes into developing, documenting, and implementing a content strategy. So, it’s extremely disappointing when you publish your content, and then no one ends up viewing it. It’s frustrating when your efforts fail to generate any leads. When content doesn’t receive the attention it deserves, marketers often blame the content itself. Although poor content is sometimes the problem, lackluster content marketing results are often due to problems with distribution.
When you’re consistently publishing good content on the right channels, you should see results. If you aren’t, take a look at how you are distributing the content you create. Be sure to include distribution in your documented content strategy, and look over this WriterAccess article that provides helpful tips and tricks to make sure your content moves.
Distribution Dilemmas? 10 Ways to Effectively Move Your Content
Creating consistently great content takes loads of wiping-the-sweat-from-your-brow, brewing-another-pot-of-coffee work. It’s no surprise that it can be monumentally frustrating when your publishing doesn’t generate the results you had hoped for. When content falls short of expectations with lack-luster results, marketers often point the finger of blame at the content itself, wondering whether it was funny, interesting, or fresh enough. Although content itself is sometimes responsible for disappointing results, the blame more often falls on poor channels and methods of distribution.
Don’t let your dolled-up content wallflower around the marketing dance. Get it moving with these tips and tricks for fancy-footed content distribution.
Swing, Tango, and Merengue: How to Move Your Content
1. Plan First, Create Later
Timely content is often essential to its effectiveness. When content is created without a distribution plan, however, it slows the publication process. Before creating a new in-depth exposé or flashy infographic, have potential publication channels ready to go.
2. Be Available
Make your content readily available wherever it’s easiest to access. Tease additional information to direct users to your website, but don’t force them to leave Facebook or Twitter before they can view a video or see any information. Your content is much more shareable when it can be viewed within a platform. Also, be sure to include social buttons on your webpages and newsletters to make it easy for readers to follow your content.
3. Optimize for Search Engines
It seems like there is a constant barrage of click-bait articles attempting to scare us all away from the power of SEO. Rest easy, search engine optimization is still a thing. Be sure your website and all of your content is optimized with keywords and outfitted for simple social sharing.
4. Choose Proper Channels
Where you publish your content is just as important as what you publish. Each social media platform serves a different purpose, hosts a different audience, and accommodates varied types of content. Put your best visual media out on Instagram and reserve your brilliant one-liners for Twitter. Optimize content for each channel, by keeping word count limitations, display, and demographics in mind.
5. Reach the Right People
Rather than throwing your content against the metaphoric wall to see what sticks, use a more strategic approach designed to reach the right people. Think about the type of person who will purchase or sign up for your product or service. Then create well-rounded, specific marketing personas to determine who populates your target market group. What issues do they care about? What problems do they need you to solve? How do they take in information? How will you best reach them?
6. Avoid Waste on Ineffective Campaigns
Don’t spend money on paid campaigns until you have tested the content. Publish small campaigns initially to see what works and what doesn’t, before you spend your marketing dollars on distributing a large campaign.
7. Measure the Right Metrics
To avoid wasting time and money on ineffective marketing, you must track metrics. You don’t, however, have to monitor every marketing metric that ever existed. Pin down what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them. Then determine the best ways to measure your results and track progress toward those specific benchmarks.
8. Recycle Content
Never use a good piece of content only once. Promote content repeatedly and translate it into different types of media. Turn an interview into an article, instructions into a video, or convert an infographic into a listicle.
9. Use Distribution Tools
Don’t waste your limited time and energy on managing countless content distribution platforms from countless different places with countless login IDs and passwords. There are several really amazing content distribution tools available (with different price points) to businesses of all sizes that allow you to schedule, publish, and manage all of these channels from a single place.
10. Test Your Distribution Tools
Content distribution tools are lifesavers. They can also be troublemakers. A single unchecked box or an incorrectly selected publication date can make or break an otherwise perfect campaign. Be sure to run tests on your content distribution tools (software, tracking links, and URL codes) before publishing.
Don’t Put the Dance Before the Tap, Get Started with Jazzy Content
If you’re following these tips and tricks, but still not getting dazzling results from your content distribution, then you might have a content problem at hand. Hire a crackerjack team of freelance writers to help you get to the heart of your brand’s personality, kick out killer content, and consistently publish high-quality. When you snuff out the content marketing blues with the right writer, the right voice, and the right personality, your content and sure-footed distribution plan will have you dancing to a new, up-beat rhythm.
Jennifer G is a full-time freelance writer and editor with a B.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. She enjoys researching and writing creative content to engage readers and developing professional voices for clients across all industries. She specializes in medical, health, veterinary, and financial writing. Having worked nearly thirteen years in finance, Jennifer applies her experience in the banking industry (marketing, social media management, consumer and commercial lending, customer service, accounts, and bookkeeping) to her writing work within the industry.
