Tag: content strategy

Two weeks ago I participated in a #Hootchat about content marketing. The Twitter chat started by asking us how we define content marketing. The majority rallies along the lines of educating, informing, helping and engaging a targeted audience with your brand story and relevant content.

What surprised me is that nobody defined content marketing in terms of better understanding your audience and their aspirations. This is where many brands are missing out. They are missing out on the biggest opportunity that content marketing and social platforms are offering them.

When small business owners approach me with the idea to redo their corporate website, I advice them what I’m about to tell you. What you say and show on your website is the real differentiator, not your site design. Start there! Then, you’ll know which website design and features are necessary to present your content.

I didn’t need to listen to last week episode of Rand Fishkin on Whiteboard Friday where he discussed the impacts of the last Google’s evolution to come to that conclusion. I learned that lesson several years ago when I was a full-time blogger. Through my blogging and online presence, I became one the foremost lifestyle & entertaining experts in Canada. I did it with organic growth. If it was true then, imagine now!

Too many businesses and people try to be everywhere when it comes to establishing their online presence. It’s the fear of losing out that takes over. By trying to be everywhere, their initiatives often fail. If you want to have a chance to be successful with your online presence, you need to focus. The following goes whether you want to establish a personal or a corporate presence. 

Last week, I felt sad for a business owner —it’s someone I don’t know. I noticed that he happily announced its brand new website on LinkedIn. He posted a very nice picture. So I clicked on his link to see the rest. The layout was modern and inviting. But I couldn’t believe what I read. The copy was horrible. I couldn’t have imagined reading something worst than that.

I’m writing this post because I don’t want you to make the same mistake. I used to run a Web design & development studio. We handled the technical side and the user interface side of their web site. When we received their copy and pictures, I was often chocked to see the lack meaningful and compelling content. Each time that happened, it made me sad.

Today I want to talk about the power of intrinsically knowing your audience. To do this, I will tell you how I orchestrated, as a food and entertaining blogger, to be featured in 2008 on Kotaku, the most influential video game blog and the 19th blog of the world at the time.

A blog for hard-code gamers is not where you expect a post on a birthday cake. Plus, my timing was out of sync. I succeeded because I perfectly understood what their editors wanted in a story. My pitch had the right ingredients. With my husband’s help, I designed a cupcake tower filled with clever gaming details.

There is no doubt that you can’t expect to become influential if you publish something once a week or even, once a day. The need to often produce and publish quality content can be overwhelming for brands. But it doesn’t have to be that hard. Part of the solution is to better manage your efforts. The way that I achieved the right balance between quantity and quality is by being a curator and a content producer. In fact, each function fuels the other.

The first order of business is figuring out what you can do to share relevant tweets, statuses and posts to your followers. What I found out through my consulting work is that companies have many sources of meaningful information that they don’t put to use. This is where collaboration between several business units at your company can save you time.

For example, talk to the people who follow the news on your industry at your company. It doesn’t have to be their official job. Ask them to feed you the best stories to read, to write about and to share with a comment. Most news should not be about you but about topics that are relevant to your customers and prospects. Make sure to tell the people who follow the news what you are looking for so they can bookmark the right stories and pitch you the right ideas.