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| Content Marketing |
The ways in which any type of business is marketed are constantly evolving, but in today's climate the pace is quicker than it has ever been before.
When 'marketing' simply meant little more than identifying a target demographic and choosing the best medium to connect with them, things were fairly straightforward for all levels of commerce. Everything from the local newspaper to national billboard and TV advertising campaigns could be utilised depending on reach and budget.
Then the internet changed everything. Today it is possible for a business of any size to compete on a playing field that, if not level is at least open for access to all.
Social media, guest blog posts and viral campaigns sit alongside paid-for adverts in an armoury that can be adapted to needs and budget and targeted for maximum success.
However, the way in which potential clients or customers access your information depends very much on the content you provide because today's search engine processes are far more complex than early versions which essentially relied on meta data hit words.
So at the start of a new year, how exactly should you be looking at improving your content marketing?
Content is king
Digital Content Marketing is a term which is of great importance to any internet based publicity campaign. Strengthening your brands presence by increasing awareness is one of the main aims that any campaign can hope to achieve and making sure that you stand above the competition in terms of search engines and social channels is the key to success.
Search engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques lie at the heart of the process of attempting to continuously attract natural backlinks to your website from which start point you can then begin building on other areas such as creating an extensive database of contacts.
Creating attractive and engaging content is the way in which you can start debates and conversations off-site as information you provide is posted and shared by potential customers.
This is one of the main reasons why so many experts regard the issue of content as the number one marketing medium for 2014.
Major players
No matter what the size of your own operation, it never hurts to look at the tactics that the major players are employing and utilising them to your own ends.
In recent years, the BBC has restructured its entire marketing operations to be more efficient with less cost. This led to the corporation scooping the Marketing Week Engage Awards 2012 Brand of the Year title.
Justin Bairamian, director of creative marketing at the BBC, explained some of the thought processes involved:
“The restructure was about creating an organisation where marketing could work far more upstream than before. That doesn’t just mean working with more senior people but showing everyone how marketing has a positive impact on the business. The earlier you get involved, the more impact you can have.”
The BBC marketing team continues to use a wider range of media for promotion as, in addition to their own TV channels, radio stations and websites, it now regularly uses social media to draw in audiences.
Jess Finning, brand marketing manager for BBC One and drama, explains:
“It’s important to get audiences to continue the conversation in their own forums.”
Technical issues
Any discussion on content marketing must take into account the actual workings of the medium in which it operates and aims to manipulate to its own advantage, namely the search engines themselves which help users navigate their way around the net.
From a technical point of view Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms have been game changers for the way in which content marketers operate. Poor-quality content has effectively been 'found out' and the spam-like collections of keywords and phrases that were an excuse for content on many webpages no longer fulfil their function of tricking searches.
This is good news for those who actually do have something to say but the problem still remains about the best way to go about getting the message out there.
Create something that is editorially worth sharing can achieve great link-backs to your site by engaging your target audience and in effect getting them to do an amount of follow-on work themselves when they re-tweet, blog, or discuss the content in forums or other social media.
Google is still currently the search engine that matters and as such any tweaks and changes to the way it processes both searches and on-site information are essential things to take into consideration for any digital marketing campaign strategy.
Beyond content
Of course there is far more to it than simply having great content. The correct use of keywords and links still has a massive impact on the all important ranking positions and carefully analysis of how your content is working is an essential part of the results process.
Long term content marketing means understanding which links people are clicking on and using that information to constantly refine your strategy. This is where using in-page analytics can really pay dividends, making sure you fully understand how bounce rates and referrals have positive and negative impacts on your overall campaign.
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