I am behind the times when it comes to the world of content marketing. Sure, it makes sense to produce relevant information to interested customers. But who feels like it when we are already generating plenty of leads? Well, as the leads from direct response slow down, appreciating that content marketing is now a necessity for reaching new plateaus in our business. So, finally got my head in the game and am excited to put time and focus into a cohesive content marketing effort, but is it too late?
BlueSky’s Blank Canvas Content Marketing
If I am lagging in this, so is all of blueSky Marketing. We have never produced content like infographics or videos to distribute to interested customers to drive future engagement. While we have provided basic information for free on webpages, nothing is focused beyond immediate lead capture. Planned initiatives pumping out useful, funny or interesting information to other spheres like social, would drive engagement and boost our SEO in the longer-term.
With an increased pace of content creation, you can see how it would be easy to think that we will simply not be able to catch up. The pitfall we need to avoid is pushing out slap-dash content just to say we are ‘doing content marketing.’ After reading articles for class this week, slapdash content would be counter-productive. There needs to be an interlocking plan between different platforms. An optimized content marketing plan that has us promoting relevant information to our target audience(s) across all channels with a semblance of coordination.
A New Hope
After reading Scherer’s article on content marketing via social, I have real hope that we can get in the game! He describes the ‘glacier’ method of content creation. This methodology would be a great place for our team to start. In that model, we would create a very rich piece of content deeply describing our product. I am envisioning this piece to be as broad in scope and as detailed as possible with features and benefits. In my world of writing, it takes an arduous process of writing and revising to come up with something truly insightful. The unpopular fact is, this will require labor hours to be taken from other projects. However, the ROI will be there! From that initial detailed piece, stats and insights can be taken and broken into ‘slivers’. Slivers can be made into ‘snack-able’ content pieces to be distributed across all platforms. Enhancing visibility will be a long process, but the ‘Glacier’ strategy gives me a simple roadmap.
Unfortunately, the results will not be immediate so management will need to be convinced. This is where managing-up begins for me. Not getting started with content marketing is not an option. The longer we wait, the further we fall behind the 8 ball…