Paul Pruneau
Content Marketing has, increasingly, become standard practice for marketing a product or service online.
Because it generally costs less than traditional offline marketing and has proven to be the single most effective strategy for SEO, virtually every brand is now doing it.
For those not yet onboard or those who think that it’s just the newest fad, they can always leave this new discipline to those who are bit more forward focused—like their competitors.
The challenge of rising content volume.
As a result of all of the resources and effort now being applied to Content Marketing, the idea of “content shock” has recently emerged. Content shock was disclosed by online marketing guru, Mark Schaefer in a blog post that caused quite a stir. In the post, Mark defined content shock as, “The emerging marketing epoch defined when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.”
While Mark’s premise is worthy of thoughtful consideration, the reality is that Content Marketing isn’t going away anytime soon. Recent research from CMI in 2014 finds 58% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget over the next 12 months. And that’s up from 54% last year. The take away suggests that brands will not be rushing back to traditional media that was never able to satisfactorily address what marketers always questioned—“I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget on advertising. I just don’t know which half”.
For those brands that have set out to meet today’s content marketing requirement of becoming both a “publisher” and “media company”, it’s appropriate to take a step back and ensure that you’re doing all that you can to optimize the expensive content assets that you now have to consistently create.
Before you present it to the world, double check the recipe.
There’s a lot to do before you hit the publish button including:
- aligning your post with the needs of your target customer personas
- being clear on how the content asset will further the customer journey toward turning a prospect into a paying customer
- ensuring your efforts are based on a content calendar
In addition to these requirements, this great infographic by Newsful, visually outlines the essential ingredients and steps that must be addressed for each and every post that you publish. To get the maximum value of every post, just follow this proven recipe for a tasty and satisfying outcome.
Infographic via Martha Spelman
Forget yelling and selling. Start helping.
The best way to avert the impact of “content shock” is to create great content that your customers and prospects will truly find relevant, interesting and worthy of sharing.
You need to start thinking and acting like a YOUTILITY. What’s that? A continuous provider of education, insights and entertainment that will aid your prospects and customers in helping them find, choose and use your product or service. Your goal should be to become the trusted online destination that attracts visitors to your site and keeps them coming back.
But of course none of this will happen if you don’t include all of the essential ingredients in the post recipe above.
Time to share.
Are you adding a special ingredient to all of your posts that makes them even more appealing? Please share.
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