Good content or “storytelling” is effective in building trust and loyalty with your customers, partners, employees, and stakeholders.
The most memorable brands do it; they tell great stories and produce amazing content in an effort to build trust and loyalty with customers, partners, employees, and stakeholders. Patagonia produces movies. Airbnb has built an entire series around guest stories. Starbucks produced a six-part feature on Amazon Video, telling stories of fútbol or soccer.
Topics discussed in this article include the benefits of content marketing, the ROI of content marketing, how to get started, and checking for quality content prior to publishing. (3-minute read)
Content marketing — defined
Educational → but its not about what the company sells. Instead, the company offers such good information that one becomes loyal to the brand. Think: storytelling meets technology.
Examples of content include videos, white papers, case studies, interviews, podcasts, eBooks, surveys, blogs, emails, info-graphs, and LinkedIn articles.
The above examples are married with social platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Reddit, Libsyn, YouTube, Facebook Live, or Tumblr.c
The benefits of content marketing
Branding: builds trust and loyalty with your customers, partners, employees, and stakeholders.
Reaches an audience who is skeptical of ads or self-promotion.
Controls your message without relying on independent media.
Less expensive than traditional advertising.
By continuously messaging your brand, it will naturally fine-tune your company’s values, mission, and your ‘why’.
Repurpose good content across multiple social channels.
Builds employee pride and help with employee recruitment.
Strengthens stakeholder relationships.
Creates buzz around your brand and become share-worthy.
Aligns your brand with good stories that are memorable, and shared by others.
What is the ROI of content marketing?
A frequent question about content marketing is, “what is the ROI of content marketing?” The best answer to this question is, “what is the ROI of a Super Bowl ad?” In order to answer the ROI question, one must weigh the ten content marketing benefits listed above.
It takes time
Curating “quality” content takes time.
- The benefits aren’t immediate – content marketing takes time. There is normally a period of trial and error to discover what works best before you see results.
- Skills and resource: content marketing can be time-consuming. It requires someone who understands business and is creative, with expertise in curation and storytelling.
- Crafting good content ideas requires requires input from the CEO and leadership team.
- Measurement: relatively easy to measure its impact on web traffic. More difficult to measure its impact on brand reputation, brand awareness and brand loyalty.
Getting started
If a company wants to get started with content marketing, these are items to consider:
- In order to be successful, it must be CEO directed and supported.
- Find a creative who knows business — and knows content curation. Quality content creation cannot be taught.
- Shift away from self-promotion: instead, promote narratives that feature stakeholders, partners, employees, and causes.
- Abandon the typical press release: find creative ways to share company news.
- Find help: use platforms like UpWork to locate talented creatives. Consider help that is not limited to your geo-location.
- Consider lead times: curating quality content takes time.
- Implement company-wide LinkedIn profiles to help share your stories.
Quality check: prior to publishing your content
With LinkedIn Publishing, take advantage of analytics
In the crowded space of digital marketing and social media platforms, LinkedIn is the most effective way to reach a B2B audience. When publishing on LinkedIn, key audience insights are provided. This makes LinkedIn one of my favorite platforms for publishing good content. While social media platforms are saturated with average content, there is a shortage of quality content. Below, an example of LinkedIn audience analytics.
About the Author
Philip Beere leads the team of creatives at Philip James Media → specializing in branding, online events, video production, content marketing, and social media marketing.
With the rise of the pandemic, and as the world moves to digital and remote work, Philip and his creative team makes it possible for organizations to outsource marketing initiatives smoothly and with ease. www.philipjames.co