Digital marketing today for any business is a very competitive and complex world.
There are many different platforms, social media channels, websites and competitive forces.
Any business today faces many challenges but also opportunities for growing their business.
When you consider the access to information for consumers, then not only does a business need to be responsive to the actions of their competitors but to the needs of a well-informed customer.
In the past, many organisations just relied upon a nice website with lovely pictures and using what is called Search Engine Optimisation to have Google send them heaps traffic for their business.
Today you can no longer rely on SEO to be your only source of traffic for your business. Your customers access multiple channels for information.
Your customers access multiple channels for information.
Consumers have access to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram to be able to evaluate companies and their products.
This has seen the growth of content marketing as a way for a business to set themselves apart from their competitors and opposition. They use this to set their authority within their marketplace and industry.
But the content cannot just be content for content sake it needs to be informative. It needs to be educational and it needs to be high-quality content.
But you cannot just produce content and leave it on your website and hope that someone will pass by like what they see, what they read and then to decide to buy your product or service. You need to actively engage in the world of digital marketing.
To gain the most impact for your content marketing there are three steps you need to take to improve the reach of your content marketing.
-
Platform
Different people learn in different ways and each of us has a preference for how we’d like to consume information.
Some people like to read and quickly skim through written content. Others like to listen to content such as podcasts or audiobooks while they are driving are exercising.
Other people love pictures and infographics that quickly summarise information in a visual way whilst others will love to watch video.
The growth and size of people involved on YouTube shows you the power and the attraction of video.
So, the first step you must do is to have your content available in different platforms.
This way you can connect with as many people as possible on their terms.
This means that instead of simply publishing a blog post you should do the following:
Create a written blog post
Create an audio podcast
Create a compelling image you can share social media
Create high-quality video
By doing this you will increase your audience reach and grow your audience much more quickly.
All these different platforms are useful:
For pictures, Pinterest and Instagram have seen substantial growth over the last few years.
For video, we only have to look at the growth and usage of YouTube to see that how important that video is to the consumer.
In a recent Forbes Magazine article entitled “How Video Marketing is Changing Online” they noted that video consumption increased by 43% last year alone.
There has also been a huge shift in marketing budgets towards online video the Forbes article states:
“With video dominating content marketing 64% budgets are moving towards video content. Brands are willing to spend more and more on video, space especially if they are targeting millennial’s.”
And when it comes to search engine traffic Mixed media reports:
“Having video on your landing page will make it 53% more likely to appear on page 1 of Google results.”
So the first step to increasing the reach of your content is to make sure you produce your content for different platforms to take advantage of people’s personal preference for consuming content.
Visual images are important to consumers so Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube are social media channels you need to be a part of.
-
Channel
The second step of content marketing is channel.
A number of businesses are still stuck in the mindset of putting their content up on their own website or blog and then trying to attract people to come to their site.
This might have worked five years ago but these days you need to adopt a different mindset.
The mindset you need to today is to: go where the people are
It used to be that everyone started their search for free information online by going to a search engine like Google, but these days, more and more people are bypassing the search engines and going straight to sites like YouTube, Pinterest or Instagram to find the information they are looking for.
What this means that you need to deploy your content to as many different channels as possible, and instead of just posting links back to your website, you need to be a native citizen of each channel.
This means you should optimise your content for each channel. For example instead of posting a link on Facebook to your YouTube video you should take the time to upload your video directly to Facebook so you maximise the impact of your content on that particular platform.
So which channel should you target?
While the big three Facebook, YouTube and Twitter but is also very important to distribute content to new and emerging channels.
Here is why…
When a channel is new there is a lot more opportunity available because there is usually a vacuum of content.
You, therefore, have a better chance to establish yourself on a new channel because initially, you won’t be competing with millions of people views.
The other important factor is that these new platforms often grow very quickly so if you can establish yourself early you can often ride the rising tide and grow your audience quickly as a channel itself expands and becomes more popular.
So in addition to Facebook YouTube and Twitter you should also be looking at Pinterest, Instagram, Slide Share, LinkedIn, Google+, iTunes audio podcasts, iTunes video podcast, Sound Cloud and any new and emerging platforms you hear about.
The third step of content marketing is consistency.
- Consistency
These days all newsfeeds are dominated by personal information feeds or streams. When you log into Facebook your newsfeed is a stream of new stories from your family, friends and pages you like.
When you log into Twitter you see a Twitter feed with a stream of tweets made by the people you follow.
The thing about these feeds is that they are constantly flowing, changing and updating.
As a content creator or business owner if you’re trying to connect with your audience and build trust and rapport the only way to do this is to be in the feed.
If you do not readily appear in people’s personal information feeds and you simply won’t be heard.
Your message won’t get through and you won’t be able to connect with your audience.
And the only way to appear in people’s feeds is to publish content frequently.
Think about TV advertising:
How often is it when you’re sitting there watching your favourite TV show or sporting event, movie ads appear, and they are dominated by the larger companies such as car companies, telephone companies, banks, major retail chains.
These companies know that they need to constantly be on your TV screen.
By constantly being in your TV feed so to speak than they know they will eventually create an impression in your subconscious mind when you looking to buy a certain item.
You now have that opportunity to create a constant feed in the minds of your ideal customer or target market. You do this by having a consistent presence on various social media channels.
The great thing about this is that you don’t have to expend a lot of money in terms of advertising fees, video production, hiring actors, crew etc.
You have the ability to be present on these various social media channels in an efficient and effective way.
It used to be that you could post a single blog post your website once a month and gradually build your audience.
But these days the world is moving at a much faster pace to connect with people, you need to consistently appear in their feeds to increase the probability that they will see your content when they login in check their personal streams.
So recapping
The first step for content marketing is to make your content available in many different platforms as possible including text, audio, image and video.
The second step for content marketing is to distribute your content to as many channels as possible and to optimise your content for each channel.
And the third step of content marketing is to increase your consistency with content creation to make sure that you connect with your audience when they are checking their personal information feeds.
So…
Effective Content Marketing = Platform + Channel + Consistency
Now, do you want to see how using these three steps can increase the impact you have on your audience by 100 times.
Now…..
First, let’s say at the present you produce content and you publish an article to your blog once a month.
This gives you a total of 12 points of contact or opportunities for your audience to engage with your message or material.
Now let’s look at how by simply applying the 3 steps to your content marketing you can transform this equation, and transform your business.
First, let’s look at platform:
Instead of only creating a written blog post but you create a blog post, an audio recording, video and image for each piece of content.
So this means your blog post which gave you 12 pieces of content has now been multiplied into 48 pieces of content that your audience can engage with.
Now let’s apply the second step, channel
Consider posting your content on your blog and take your different forms of content and distribute them on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Slide Share, Google+, LinkedIn, iTunes audio podcast, iTunes video podcast, Sound Cloud.
Your blog instead of 48 points of contact you now have created 576 opportunities for your audience to engage with your message.
Let’s apply the third step of consistency so instead of publishing one piece of content each month in our increase your consistency to once a week.
This means your producing 4 times as much content which in combination with the other steps means you now have 2304 point to contact helping to convey your message to your audience.
You can see by applying these three steps you now have increased impact of your message by 192 times.
Time to grow the reach of your content marketing