I Became a Content Marketer Last Year: Now What?

The benefits of content marketing and a strong content strategy have been touted and talked to death. Many brands and organizations followed suit, becoming publishers of content aimed at their core audiences. In the haste to become producers of content overnight, many organizations are now dealing with the consequences of editorial calendars that need to be filled, CFOs that want to see an immediate return, and marketers that have brand new programs that need to be run alongside their original content strategy.

I'm going to discuss how to take a content marketing strategy and make sure it’s still working for you, including how to analyze, measure and optimize it as your needs change and grow. For those who haven’t established a content strategy yet, there’s plenty to learn so you don’t run into some of the same challenges.

You’re either reading this article because you started content marketing and want to continue to improve or you haven’t started yet, but want to now. Either way, you know that content marketing is important to the future of your efforts.

What is Content Marketing?

Haven’t we been doing this all along? What is the difference between how brands were doing things before and how content marketing is being approached now?  In order to understand this, we must understand the difference between a direct sales or marketing approach, and a brand marketing approach. The former is advertising and marketing that has a clear call to action to “buy” a product, while the latter is a longer approach that builds an emotional connection over time.

Your audiences expect more these days from the brands they want to reward with their business. Content marketing isn’t just about making a sale or running an ad. Your audiences want to feel a connection with your brand and that your values align with theirs, and to have help solving their challenges. These challenges extend well beyond the limited benefits of your product or service.

Great content marketing doesn’t always feel like marketing solves problems instead of asking for something from the audience. It builds loyalty because it helps consumers understand what your brand stands for so you can align your audience’s values with those of your organization.

A great example of this is some of Chipotle’s branding videos that talked more about creating a better world instead of touting the benefits and attributes of their burritos. This built good will with those who share Chipotle’s values and in many ways went much further than a direct marketing advertisement might have.

You’re definitely not alone in the world of content marketing. According to Curata.com, investment in content marketing is on the rise, with 76% of marketers increasing their investment. Many marketers now have dedicated content marketing budgets allocated, as 64% companies with a documented content strategy have a dedicated content marketing budget. In fact, nearly one-third of the majority company’s budgets is spent on content marketing.

Content marketing is now commonplace across B2C and B2B marketers. As they hurried to become brand publishers overnight, many organizations are now dealing with the consequences of editorial calendars that need to be filled, CFOs that want to see an immediate return, and marketers that have brand new programs that need to be run alongside their original content strategy.

Why did you become a content marketer? It was probably one or more of the following:

• You wanted to create a conversation with your customers that didn’t always center solely around your product
• You wanted to shape brand perception by illustrating other “sides” to your your brand’s personality and values that might not come across through more direct advertising
• You wanted to gauge public opinion on topics and issues
  
  

Ultimately, it was because traditional marketing & advertising wasn’t reaching everyone you need to reach. It’s not by any means that more direct forms of marketing shouldn’t be used or that they don’t work. What we know about great content marketing is that it augments and enhances the other efforts you are doing. You need both forms in order to truly be successful, since direct is a quicker short-term approach and content marketing plays the long game and builds loyalty which translates to repeat business and long-term customers.

What we do know, however is that doing content marketing well has its own challenges. There are too many channels, and not enough time, resources or budget to conquer all of them well.

We also know that it can be hard to measure the effectiveness of your efforts when you are publishing content on many channels, with different sources of analytics and sometimes crossing the online/offline space. According to the Center for Media Research:

“Because they’re expected to find new ways to engage consumers across a continually expanding number of touchpoints, the inability to measure engagement from content, let alone across channels, means that they’re attempting to execute against their content strategy while blindfolded”

According to RAPTmedia, 60% of marketers are unable to accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) on the content they produce, and nearly half are unable to measure content performance across all the channels they market on.

Content Marketing is a Commitment

What does it mean to be a publisher? It means that your brand plans, creates, distributes and manages content. In addition to selling products & services, you find a way to connect with what the problems your customers have and provide a solution to them.

Your content is free (sort of), but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. In the process of providing content, you have the ability to collect data from your customers. Episodic (multi-part) content gets people back to your marketing channels, and marketing automation streamlines their return.

Being a publisher of content that your audiences value and are seeking provides the basis for a long-term relationship with your customers and allows you to play a thought leadership/trusted advisor relationship with your audiences.

According to Jessica Lee from the Content Marketing Institute:

“Let’s face it: Magazines like Vogue and newspapers like The New York Times didn’t become successful without operating as a well-oiled machine. They didn’t sometimes publish content. They didn’t sometimes have all the resources in place. And they didn’t sometimes follow writing guidelines.”

Of course you will need to have all of the components of a great content marketing team in order to be successful. This includes having roles for both creators of content and editors. It also means having processes and guidelines that specify who does what, how it’s reviewed, and what happens when it’s time to publish. You also need to establish a lexicon that serves as an agreed-upon terminology that everyone understands. For instance what does “white paper” mean to everyone.  Does it mean the same to everyone or will there be confusion about what needs to be produced? Finally, a strong set of brand and style guidelines will keep your content consistent and on message.

Good content marketing solves a problem. You need to understand your audience and understand why what they need. What is your audience searching for? How can your brand provide a solution while getting to talk about what you’re great at?

How to be Successful with Content Marketing

Despite the challenges that content marketing can present, there are some clear ways to be successful in your efforts. We’ll discuss five now.

Make your content marketing manageable. Remember that you need a strong team and guidelines and processes to follow.  Maintain a content marketing plan that includes an editorial calendar. This editorial calendar will help keep you and your teams on schedule, help you stay organized, and help you balance other opportunities as they arise. It will also help you when it comes time to report on your efforts.

Make your content marketing measurable. This measurement needs to be defined at the start of your content creation efforts and built into everything you create. A testing plan will help you keep it optimized over time. When you plan this from the start of your efforts

Create a plan grow and share. We definitely know that high levels of engagement with your content is more important than superficial numbers such as followers and likes. However, if your audience is too small, you may be lacking the critical mass you need to grow your engagement. Advertising is becoming critical on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Making your content shareable helps with this as well. With everything you make, there needs to be something that makes someone say (or think), “I HAVE to let other people know about this!”

Make it about your audience. What you make has to be useful by solving a problem or answering a question they have. It will always be more valuable if it is the answer to something they are looking for already. Don’t estimate the need to make things mobile-friendly either. Over 2 billion people access the web from mobile devices, and 61% people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.

Give your audiences something to do. Brands that are successful involve their audience and give their audiences something to do. While brands will never be able to compete with individuals, they can work with them. Interestingly enough, there are only only 3 brands in the YouTube top 500. This means individuals are flocking to see content created by other individuals and moreso than content being created by brands. There is no one better than other customers to create content for your business.

Conclusion

So what’s next for a content marketer such as yourself? As with all marketing efforts, you should analyze your results, and continue to review and revise your strategy based on that. Finally you should analyze and optimize your efforts, and repeat the process based on results from your testing.

While it can be quite a commitment to become a content marketer, those who have started to benefit from it will know that it provides that long-term relationship which is a perfect complement to your more direct, short-term marketing efforts.