The art of content marketing is like building a house. Your strategy is the foundation; it’s vital to your success. If you don’t have a foundation for your house, the walls, roof and all other elements will crumble around it. The same can be said about your content marketing investments: If you don’t do the proper work up-front, your time, energy and investment will go to waste.
If your job is to develop your brand’s content strategy, or make adjustments and improvements based on past initiatives, this week’s Fast & Easy Friday is for you. Below are some helpful articles chock-full of valuable tips to help you create a sustainable, buyer-focused strategy so you can tell more relevant and compelling stories.
- The elements of a killer content strategy: Content4Demand believes that strategy is everything. It’s the cornerstone to effective content, and without it, a brand’s efforts will inevitably fall flat. An effective content strategy encompasses a variety of important elements, including buyer profiles/personas (or at the very least, an in-depth understanding of your target audience), buyer-focused messaging, and a thorough content audit and content gap analysis. This article, courtesy of Business2Community, provides a good overview of these and other elements that should make up your content strategy. For one, there’s some interesting insight around the role of context and community, which can help you craft more relevant content assets and campaigns.
- Brand perception and customer-centricity become key investments: The primary goal for every marketer should be to share information and insights that make their customers’ lives easier. However, many marketers are losing sight of this goal in order to create and publish content as quickly as possible. What if I told you there was a happy medium? According to a new infographic from B2B International, many companies are investing in customer-centricity and conducting in-depth research that will help them understand how buyers perceive their brands. With these insights, they can craft more relevant and impactful content that aligns with buyers’ wants and needs and also addresses specific business goals.
- How CMOs are tackling content marketing challenges: Research from IBM indicates that organizations are investing in content across the entire lifecycle. But overall, they are still having trouble navigating these unique journeys and how buyers use different touchpoints and technologies along the way. This article from IBM provides analysis on some of the research and offers a few great tips for improving internal collaboration to improve content marketing effectiveness. Most importantly, the article outlines the questions team members should ask to accelerate content creation and production, especially around repurposing existing content.
- Give your content special treatment: As I noted earlier, many marketers still resort to telling flat, company-focused stories. Due to a lack of time, financial support and manpower (or all three), they simply can’t dedicate the energy they need to craft compelling, buyer-focused stories that can make content more memorable. This blog from Skyword addresses these challenges and some storytelling myths head-on with tips that folks in even the most technical industries can use.
- BONUS STORY: Is SXSW a must-attend event for marketers?: When I used to hear about SXSW, I instantly thought of film and video games — more B2C-oriented industries that impact our personal lives. But now, the show has become a vibrant stomping ground for B2B marketers and tech companies that want to ramp up their strategies. This article from The Holmes Report uncovers insights from some of the brands in attendance, including Visa, Intel and HP, and the value the show can bring to the professional community. And if you’re looking for some nuggets on the top trends and most buzzed-about topics from the show, you should check out this stellar recap from VentureBeat.
If you want to learn more about how to create a sustainable and effective content strategy, here are some resources that will help:
