You may be producing some incredible pieces of content – but who cares if they don’t reach anyone! 

Ask yourself this:

Are you using Content Marketing to its full advantage, given that you already have all the necessary resources and talents there, willing and waiting?

At the moment, and you see it a lot, many Content Marketers aren’t actually effectively marketing the content they produce – as ridiculous as that sounds. 

If you already have someone in your team who manages Content, Digital PR and / or Social Media, the chances are you’re already doing one small part of Content Marketing. 

You’re taking steps in the right direction in the fact that you’re probably using content to aid your Digital PR or Social Media efforts. 

I’m going to cover off a few tactics you can implement to start making the most of, and growing, your Content Marketing offering, which will make a tangible difference to your business.

Evaluate your current strengths and weaknesses

I did this recently for a client and you can see an example below:

• You already have all the necessary resources and talents to be able to develop a strong Content Marketing offering… BUT you aren’t taking advantage of either. For example, you could create assets for other reasons than to support Digital PR.

• You are already offering a small part of Content Marketing, through Digital PR and the Content team working closely together… BUT there is a lack of understanding about what Content Marketing is and how it differs from what you currently do, while Social Media and Email Marketing is disregarded in this aspect.

• There is a clear understanding that Digital PR in particular has wider reaching KPIs than you are currently reporting on, and that there are other channels you can utilise to market content… BUT the KPIs you currently report on are still heavily aligned with SEO, which means you are limiting yourselves to potential new customers who may find you through other channels.

If you feel you fall into the first or second weakness above, think about how you can use content (and not just Editorial SEO content) with input from Design and Development where necessary. This will expand your offering and hit a wider range of KPIs. Assets aren’t just for Digital PR – they can be broken down for social and used to improve brand awareness, for example. 

There is such a wide range of content formats that you can best present your ideas that are so often overlooked, whether because you get stuck in a rut and know what works, or you stick to the trends every man and his dog are spouting off on Twitter.

Try to start thinking a little more “outside the box”.

Obviously, video content is massive right now and it’s only set to grow over the next 12 months, but even within video itself there are so many things you can do with it. 

Can you collate a load of UGC and stitch it all together? Can you get people from behind the scenes, in your warehouse or a sales assistant, for example, to film a day in their life?

Remember, video content doesn’t have to be expensive. Everyone has a perfectly good camera in their back pocket, on their phone and if done right, it can tell a story 100 times better than a professionally produced video.

Get more out of your content

If you feel you fall into the third weakness, then there is a bigger discussion at hand because, historically, Content Marketing has always been hard to prove worth.

Rather than creating content just for SEO or Digital PR purposes, think about creating just one great piece of content which you can then market through PR, Social, Email, and even Influencers to get more bang for your buck. That way, the main work has already been done and its more about repurposing it.

You’re making your content work harder by not silo-ing it into one purpose before you’ve even begun.

Your Content Marketing expert is probably already providing recommendations on how you can support our current efforts through Social Media. Your Design team are probably already creating supporting assets for Twitter and Facebook and your Content team are probably already providing copy for certain channels to support editorial content they are creating.

Get them talking!

Improve your reporting

When it comes to reporting, start thinking of it as more of a hierarchy and about how each piece of activity is feeding into it.

At the bottom, you may have your ‘fluffier’ KPIs, such as number of backlinks, number of comments or amount of page views.

In the middle, in Tier 2, you may have rankings, new followers or online sentiment.

Finally, in Tier 1, the God Tier, you should have the number of conversions or revenue you can attribute to this activity – because at the end of the day, your business is there to make money. 

You can bet your bottom dollar, it’s going to look a lot better in a board meeting if you can go to them with an ROI figure than a list of new followers on Twitter.

Need some help with your Content Marketing? Get in touch with us.