What Is Content Marketing? How to design participating Content.

What Is Content Marketing?

Traditional marketing is turning into less and fewer effective by the minute; as a forward-thinking marketer, you recognize there should be a much better approach.

Definition

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

How to design participating Content

Design means that far more than color schemes and stock photos. The method can look completely different for each marketing team, and even for each team’s numerous content items.

In general, style starts at the terribly starting, as you design a content marketing strategy. Understanding the brand’s personas and marketing goals can form the essential form of every design—each ought to be helpful to your personas, and faithful your whole voice.

A strong content marketing strategy includes a spread of content sorts, thus as individual items begin to require form, there area unit some specific things to stay in mind:

Blog Posts

Distill your content marketing strategy into your web log schedule/strategy. The corporate web log will and will be wont to cross-promote different content, which can facilitate keep posts on a uniform schedule. If you don’t have a marketing team member WHO is aware of SEO, this can be one space wherever you may wish to consult an expert.

Ebooks

Ebook content ought to follow some style of narrative structure, and embody a great deal of fine, visual style. The goal of associate ebook is to teach (rather than entertain), however ensure to stay the language informal if that's in line with your whole and personas.

Cheat Sheets

These area unit short (two or 3 pages at most). Meaning there won’t be a great deal of space for large pictures, thus you’ll wish to use text format to create them straightforward for a reader to quickly scan through. Link or purpose to different resources for a lot of in-depth learning.

Workbooks and Templates

A great thanks to keep your whole before of consumers, whereas conjointly being extremely useful. These resources ought to be designed for print and created as interactive and sensible as potential.

Whitepapers and Reports

These area unit just like associate ebook therein they're primarily academic materials, however whitepapers and reports area unit usually less diagrammatically designed and use language that's a touch a lot of skilled. They'll conjointly produce opportunities to partner with different organizations.

Infographics

The name says it all: simply offer readers information and graphics. Use as very little text as potential for the previous, and let the latter tell the story. If you don’t have a killer graphics creator in-house, this can be one that you may wish to figure with knowledgeable.

Slide Decks

Slide decks area unit a good format for breaking down complicated concepts into easy steps or bite-sized items. Keep the slides simple: lowest text in one font throughout, and use huge pictures & graphics.

Video

The trick to effectively victimisation video as a part of a content strategy is keeping it as dateless as potential. Otherwise, you risk wasting resources (time and money) change videos each year. High-quality video content may be wont to expose your whole to YouTube’s massive and active audience.

Case Studies

Build case studies with real numbers and complete stories. This may facilitate keep the content centered on the worth and results, not the whole.

Content Marketing and Social Media

Social media is one in every of the first vehicles for a content marketing campaign—especially the a lot of entry-level, amusing items. There area unit 3 tiers of social media marketing for your content:

Owned: Sharing your content on the brand’s own social media channels may be a fast, customizable, and free chance to attach along with your audience.

Paid: Most social networks allow some reasonably paid advertising. Matching a network’s demographics along with your brand’s personas can assist you confirm wherever to take a position.

Earned: The foremost valuable, however hardest to form, social media promotion happens once your audience shares your content with their networks.

Each social network tends to collect a distinct style of user. Match your personas to network demographics to seek out out wherever you audience is social on-line, and begin sharing your content. Let's cowl the variations between social networks:

Facebook

Facebook continues to be the largest social network, and whereas it's the fastest-growing, that growth is swiftness and shifting. At the start of last year, Facebook usage was growing quickest among older adults. As of Gregorian calendar month 2015, Facebook users area unit presumably to be college-educated, lower-income girls.

Twitter

Emerging markets account for seventy eight of the traffic on Twitter, with Asian nation together of the fastest-growing. Statistically speaking, Twitter users tend to be recent school graduates living in urban areas.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is usually referred to as the skilled social network, and it’s obvious that its users area unit serious. Cardinal % of social referrals to company websites return from LinkedIn, compared to Revolutionary Organization 17 November from Facebook and Bastille Day from Twitter. A look at the demographics demonstrates that LinkedIn has the best proportion of college-educated, higher-income users of all the main social channels.

Pinterest

Consumers love Pinterest. 47 % of web shoppers have created a buying deal due to a Pinterest recommendation, and Pinterest generates 4x a lot of revenue (per click) than Twitter. Pinterest users tend to be a lot of affluent girls living in rural areas.