One piece of content should be put through 100 channels.
Are you giving your content the most exposure you can?
Simply creating high-quality content doesn’t guarantee an effective content marketing campaign, as it still needs to be promoted to reach its full potential.
With marketing platforms and advertising everywhere we turn, the importance of your content strategy has become one of the most valuable resources in your marketing teams’ arsenal. Creating engaging content that grabs attention is one thing; but are you making the most of both online and offline channels to get your business or product in front of the right consumer?
How do you decide which content marketing channels to use?
We are spoiled for choice with marketing options, from paid online content channels to traditional print media. In this article, we explore how your great piece of content should be put through a higher number of marketing channels for maximum exposure, and how you can utilise these channels to further the impact of your brand.
Own Channels
Your first point of call for maximising any of your content is to produce and publish for the content channels you own. This includes your business website, EDMs to your database, and your blog.
As a starting point, putting your content through your own channels directs business straight back to your site and socials; promotes SEO and is an important tool in linking your brand across several platforms.
As your own channels are the first representation of your business, executing the distribution gives you the most control over your content and should be the first point of call for your content strategy.
Having a unified message across all your marketing and content channels makes it easier for your customer to use your services and identify if there are any flaws within that customer journey.
Social Channels
The content Holy Grail, social media has seen the rise of targeted content since its inception, and with over 2.7 billion social media users worldwide; it’s a veritable captive audience of your news, new products or updates.
Off the back of updating your own channels, your social media pages are the next point of call. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are the stock standard for all businesses; but you can further your content distribution with the use of Youtube and Vimeo accounts.
The content you have produced can quickly be turned into a PowerPoint presentation, that in turn can be turned into a video, and content with video has been proven to produce higher conversion and click through rates. Forbes reports that emails with videos have click through rates that are up to 300% higher than emails without, and videos on landing pages increase conversion by 80%.
With this multi-channel approach, your brand awareness becomes higher and your content more likely to target the consumers you are after.
Paid Channels
Paid content and advertising should of course always be your biggest content distribution strategy, and like everything else, you get what you pay for.
Google Adwords will set you back up to $50 per or more per click depending on what you are promoting and how long for; but puts your content (or links there to) at the forefront.
Facebook advertising allows you to target the demographic and location of user you are wanting to put your content in front of. These have proven to be a highly effective marketing technique and it’s no surprise with 1.74 billion users worldwide.
Instagram also allows you to boost posts, Pinterest has sponsored pins, Twitter has promoted tweets, and Youtube has featured videos.
Another option is for paid likes or followers. This boosts your content to appear higher in search settings by tricking the algorithm to display for more users as it’s seen as content others want to engage with.
Syndicated Channels
Syndicated Channels are channels where content from one website is made available to other sites. Most of the biggest and most influential sites on the web feature syndicated content, including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and CNN.
Content syndication is thus a method of republishing content on other sites to reach a broader audience. Syndicating your content gets your content (either the full article or a shortened version of it) in front of a different audience who otherwise would have never known it existed.
With its “on your behalf” strategy; influencers may post about your service or offering on their own website or social pages and link or tag back to your site or content.
Teaming up with an established brand already high in SEO will push you further up online search ratings, and projects you directly in front of that business / person or brand’s network.
Guest blogging is a fantastic channel for this and jumping on the back of blogging platforms like WordPress increases that visibility substantially.
Other methods of syndication may involve guest blogging, display ads (paid and syndicated) on other sites linking to yours, or Slideshare – an online content sharing community.
Organic Channels and Physical Social Channels
Not so much a channel in and of itself, but one of the most important. Growing organically with online likes, shares and reviews will always be the best path forward in promoting your content against ever-changing online algorithms. Interacting with your client base and putting your best customer service face forward ensures more online interaction; and a steady growth in organic likes and shares.
Physical Social Channels refer to word of mouth and positive reviews. The hardest to master but the most effective; who a consumer chooses to do business with is largely dependent on what their friends and immediate peer group have to say.
Though your content should reflect your offering, your customer service will be the biggest factor with this channel. Ensure you or your staff are completely familiar with your services and products to enable you or someone on your behalf to speak confidently about your offerings.
It is all well and good to have the most impressive content, but without the knowledge and interpersonal skills to back this up, this could be a quickly lost channel to market yourself.
Traditional Channels
With so many online options, it’s easy to forget the traditional channels of hard copy media are still just as effective. Targeted advertisements or articles in newspapers, local council papers or neighbourhood centres have been proven to still have an impact, and in fact, outbound marketing can help leverage your inbound marketing efforts.
Traditional hard copy content techniques are also incredibly valuable for promoting networking meetups, welcoming events and other functions that will help you launch your business or attract more customers.
Many suburbs have a local community board or supermarket board which local businesses can display their services on. With high-level foot traffic in these areas, it’s a content channel that is often overlooked but can be effective at targeting the older or offline demographic.
Personalised hard copy releases to targeted businesses or consumers you’d like to work set you aside as a business and show your content has put heart and thought behind who they are targeting.
Billboard, radio and magazine articles, advertisements and content remain relevant in the marketing sphere and offer an overlooked channel to get your message out there.
Putting your content through multiple channels allows your customers to discover you in multiple ways and ultimately expands your reach.
With one great piece of content, your message can be clipped for different channels and put to best use by oversaturating the demographic you want to get in front of.
So, how is your content strategy looking now?
Written by Paige Hart for Slidesho.
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