Making the Invisible Visible: Content Marketing Amplification Tips

By April 25, 2016 Content Marketing

In one minute, you can probably like one Facebook post, retweet one account and download one mobile app.

But in the grand scheme of the Internet, every minute users simultaneously like 4,166,667 Facebook posts, send 347,222 Tweets and download 51,000 apps.

This massive amount of online activity has led to an overcrowded and noisy content marketing environment.

The blogs, whitepapers and social content you are publishing is just a small fraction of the thousands going out every minute. When everyone has something to say, it’s hard to even hear yourself. It’s why visibility has become an important quality to the executives of most companies.

So rather than valuing creative and relevant work, the C-suite is often pushing its own agenda and encouraging marketers to not be the most important, but rather to be the loudest.

So often, just trying to be the loudest drowns out the worth of certain content and marketing activities. And suddenly, what you devoted a great amount of energy to becomes invisible in a ubiquitous content marketing landscape. The trick to making invisible marketing visible again is to challenge the industry norms, push the limits and don’t allow CEOs to completely control your efforts.

They might want the biggest ad in the subway station, but you know a Tweet to the daily commuter might be more effective. Trust your instincts as an experienced marketer. Don’t let the fear of becoming inconsequential squelch your attempts to be authentic and original.

It’s usually the fresh voices that prevail in the end. The following areas are places you can refocus your attempts to bring relevancy and gravity back to your company and the message it is delivering to customers and prospects.

Refocusing Attempts to Bring Relevancy to Your Company

Content

With the average B2B content marketer using 13 different content tactics, this is a space that could use some refining and ambitious strategy. Every professional at some point gets so comfortable with his job that he falls into a rut. Producing the same content through and through can be exhausting and even the most creative person will eventually hit a wall.

In these cases, take a step back and reevaluate what you are trying to accomplish with your content marketing and how you reinvigorate it. At each point of the content journey, there are ways to begin again.

Social Media

With 93 percent of content marketers engaging in social media marketing, this content comes in at the highest volume. Most companies post between two and four times a week, but a quarter of all companies post once a day. And that’s just Facebook. Twitter and LinkedIn account for much more of a company’s social presence.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to refresh your social content. Because it is so dense, you have the liberty to try new ideas and test the waters without fear of outright failure. If one new post doesn’t perform well, you can scrap the idea. Look to your competitors, social media influencers and examples of innovative B2B social campaigns for inspiration.

Interactive elements, like polls, contests and hashtag participation, are great ways to get your followers involved. It also pays to research your current and prospective hashtag usage. You might find an untapped tag waiting to engage a whole new set of customers.

Blogs

This is also one of the most common forms of content marketing with 81% of marketers populating and promoting a company blog. And while only 59 percent of marketers find blogs effective, it’s still a good way to keep up the conversation, delve deeper into topics and establish thought leadership.

To keep your blog exciting, first settle on a publishing schedule. The consistency will hold you accountable and will allow you to plan ahead with interesting content. The basics of blogging include using jargon appropriately, becoming an expert, predicting the future and keeping it straightforward.

But if you are already doing all these things and are still looking for some additional zest, you can seek guest posts from other industry leaders or even your customers. Don’t be afraid of what might seem a little wacky. A comparison to pop culture isn’t a deviation from the serious, but actually might be a great way of connecting with the fun side of your customers.

Emails

The email newsletter used to go straight to a spam folder and never see the light of day. Now that marketers are creating valuable content, the newsletter is an informative platform your customers can use to their preference. Whether it stays in the inbox for a week until your customer has time to read it or gets opened and clicked right away, it’s a place for presenting the most important updates and thought-provoking material.

For a total overhaul of your email marketing, you should do further research. But if you just want to increase your click-through rate, make sure you are including lots of visuals, calls-to-action and opportunities for conversion. No one wants to read a newsletter that scrolls for days. Customers want snippets with links to something longer if they feel so compelled to learn more.

So keep it short, mix it up and don’t deliver the same old newsletter bound to be deleted because it looks exactly like the one you sent last month. Format is good, staleness is not.

Personal Touchpoints

Content is not the only way organizations communicate with customers. You can also revitalize personal touchpoints. If you have a live chat function on your website, recommend a script, but don’t live and die by it. Allowing a representative to talk to a customer as a real person improves the relationship and your overall reputation.

If your sales people are the ones presenting a large portion of your marketing collateral, including sales decks, brochures and webinars, make sure they are fully trained to be quality company advocates. This requires a deep knowledge of the company, a passion for connecting with people and a desire to combine the two characteristics. Marketing can provide the sales team with the right messaging to make sure this is the renewed approach.

 

Source: Business

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