All About Content Marketing By Mike Tao

Let's now turn our attention to content marketing. A fast growing digital marketing strategy, that is particularly relevant to social media. Unlike traditional media platforms, on which the audience attention is primarily driven and held captive by the publishers and professional content producers, users of digital and social media can freely create, view and share information and content based on their own interests. As such, traditional forms of advertising can easily be ignored and filtered. So in addition to making the advertising messages more creative, more eye-catching, another strategy for marketers to engage consumers is through the interesting and original content tailored for their target audience. In the remaining time of this lesson, I want to discuss content marketing, and then the critical role of social media as a driving force behind this growing marketing trend. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a highly strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. To simply put, content marketing is about marketers playing the role of media content producers to create original and interesting content for its target consumers with an aim to attract their attention to the brand or the product. For example, instead of, or in addition to paying for an advertising campaign of a new convertible sports car, an automaker can create a popular blog on the web or podcast series about the joy of driving. The influence of the content marketing is not achieved through explicit and direct persuasions, but through audience engagement and brand recognition. There are a variety of ways to place and promote marketing content. Content marketing can be done through paid, display advertising, and sponsorship. For example, marketers can pay to promote their original content within a social media users news feed as native advertising, they can also sponsor a block section on a popular news web portal. There also several unpaid channels for content marketing. Postings and sharings by social media users, is a huge driving force behind successful content marketing. While unpaid and organic content sharing on social media is essential, some companies may also sponsor marketing content on social media, that looks and feels just like user-generated content. For example, some companies can pay for YouTubers, to create sponsored product reviews or publicity stunts to generate brand awareness. Even though, any sponsor program must be clearly labeled. Research show that consumers often have a hard time separating those organic and those sponsored social media content, and this is the gray area where native advertising and creative content marketing overlap. Finally, many of the channels previously used in public relations such as earned media coverage, owned corporate media outlets can also be strategically used for content marketing. In fact, the lines between public relations activities and content marketing activities are so thin and arbitrary in the digital era, these two marketing functions have been largely merged in the digital marketing world. Because of its flexibility and low cost, content marketing is often used in complement to traditional promotional campaigns. More and more businesses adopt an integrated marketing approach to reach customers. In these integrated campaigns, marketers carefully plan, coordinate, and execute the timing, and pace, and rhythm in channel of marketing communication, to engage their target consumers. This process is highly strategic and coordinated. Content marketing, is also a great choice in situations where marketers are uncertain about the impacts and outcomes of traditional advertising campaign.

 For example, a well executed advertising campaign can boost sales and brand recognition in the very short run. But it's medium and long-term impacts on brand loyalty and trust might be questionable and hard to measure. So content marketing could be a very much better and a far more effective strategy for developing sustained consumer engagement. Similarly, content marketing is more powerful and useful than many traditional marketing activities for raising awareness and knowledge among consumers about a product or a cause. While a 30-second tv spots or web banner impression, can arouse temporary interests. These marketing channels are not ideal for consumer education. As such, content marketing is frequently used and widely adopted in promoting social causes such as environmental protection and health, and these topics require marketers to truly engage the stakeholders by promoting sustainable behavioral change. Finally, Content Marketing is a cost effective tool. It is ideal for startup companies with a small marketing budget but aggressively seeking growth. It is also a great marketing channel for promoting non manufactured and knowledge based products and services.
There are several important steps to follow in creating a successful content marketing campaign. The process should always start with research and strategy. Content marketers should develop a set of clearly articulated business goals and objectives, and then thoroughly analyze and research the market condition. Then, gain a deep understanding of their target consumers and media users. Based on these insights, content marketers can then decide on the theme and the topic of the content that they want to create. The next essential step in content marketing is planning and preparation. Content marketers need to improve the visibility of the websites through SEO or Search Engine Optimization, search analytics, traffic and analytics, and they can also develop a full list of keywords and search phrases. Then, they need to budget human equipment and financial resources. Issues to be considered range from the cost of buying and maintaining a domain name, to finding a reliable and sustainable content developing team. After research and careful planning, it is time to create digital assets such as images, videos, articles, and et cetera. One critical issue to consider before launching a content marketing campaign, is its sustainability. Marketers must consider and understand that it's labor intensive to create new, relevant, and interesting content for the target audience, and update them frequently. In the digital world, media users can choose from millions of information sources, and it's extremely difficult for the audience and the readers in the digital era to stay focused on one thing. As such, do not treat content creation lightly. Good and relevant stories will spark audience interest, but they lose their interest very quickly. Now, once the content is created, the next step is to promote the content through various digital channels. Commonly used channels for delivering marketing content includes: search engines, social media, direct mail, and blogs. Finally, content marketers should promote and monitor, and track the delivery and impacts of content, through performance indicators such as social media buzz, website traffic, number of subscriptions, and more. Content marketers can use very similar measures of campaign impact as those used in public relations. For example, a commonly used way to assess return on investment or ROI of a content marketing, is to calculate the monetary value of reaching a certain number of audience, if this were a traditional advertising campaign. This measure is known as the advertising equivalency, and it's a very useful measure of ROI. Finally, I want to circle back to the focus of this lesson which is social media. Social media play a huge role in a success of a content marketing campaign. Social media allow marketers to identify and personalize content for their target audience, making the content more relevant and "sticky." Social media also allow information to be quickly and widely shared through online social networks, creating a "buzz" around the content. These two dimensions, the buzz, and personal relevance, or stickiness, can create four types of commonly seen content marketing campaigns. First, the vanity content that does not generate a widespread buzz, or a sustainable interest among social media users. For example, much of the content marketing fall into this category. As digital media users, we may notice such type of marketing content on our social media feeds every day. We may even read it out of our curiosity. But we probably wouldn't share with our friends, nor would we pay closer attention to such vanity. Sometimes, however, certain interesting content can get our attention and trigger a widespread social media buzz around an issue. This type of publicity matched material is a powerful way to create short-term, and intense public attention. But the public may quickly move on to the next hot issue. For example, last year, a silly debate about the color of a dress in a photo shared on social media triggered an intense public interest. But a story like this quickly moved out of the spotlight, and then replaced by something else. Some marketing content can successfully reach a target audience and stick to them. However, such highly personalized content, may not generate buzz in the general public. For example, I'm subscribed to many digital marketing blogs, and I frequently read those blogs to help myself stay connected to the rapidly changing digital media landscape. But, rarely would I share such information with my social media friends, and all my social media pages. Finally, and perhaps the most successful type of content marketing, is the viral content marketing. The viral content marketing campaigns were those that can lead to wide and long public engagement. Those are stories, blogs, and online videos that are viewed and shared by millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world, and will be circulated on the web for a long time. For example, the movie trailers of upcoming blockbusters such as the Star Wars franchise or the Marvel superhero movies can generate sustained buzz globally.