“Content is King!”
Ah, the wonderfully overused statement that makes me want to throw my monitor at the wall and then hang my head in shame because it’s actually true. I feel like I can safely assume that we can all agree on the increasing importance of awesome content. Recently, it seems like everyone is championing for companies to evolve the way in which they approach creating content. (Ie. Coca-Cola’s 2020 content strategy. If you haven’t watched these videos, I’d highly recommend investing 20 minutes in order to see how big brands are changing the way they think about a cohesive marketing strategy) Here in the Distilled NYC office, I’m surrounded by Tom Critchlow and John Doherty who are single handedly pushing companies to have inspired content and changing marketers mindsets.
This is great and all, and ‘imma let you boys finish, but shifting a companies’ mindset and creating inspiring pieces is tough!
Note: I am in no way suggesting we don’t strive to achieve this, we should always try to effect change and produce content that strikes a nerve within. I’m just pointing out the obvious fact that these content strategies are a longer-term play.
Besides the obvious SEO benefits to having unique content, engaging materials also help your customers remember your brand. So by having things people find interesting on your site, the more likely it is for them to come back. However, what if you’re not Coke and don’t have a huge fan/customer base to rely on along with a marketing budget that has a lot of zeros? All this amazing content you’re producing is falling on deaf ears. Of course you’ll most likely push the content through all the various social channels to hopefully gain some traction, but again this will mainly reach people that already know about your brand.
So how do you create excellent pieces of content that attracts a new audience and spreads your brand reach?
Well, if you are a company that doesn’t have time or resources to invest heavily into outreach you can create content for specific content niche communities. Typically, before I begin working on a creative piece or kick-off linkbuilding or produce any form of content for a client, I think:
“Who would want to read/watch/listen to this?”
and
“What 5 sites would link to this?”
By doing this, I’m ensuring that I have a clear understanding of why I’m producing this content. So, by creating content specifically for certain communities you are targeting a new audience that has an interest in a specific form.
Below I will outline some content communities where you should be targeting to either create content for or place pre-existing awe-inspiring content!
Why I Chose These Communities
Note: this is not a comprehensive list – my goal was to put together a list of actionable platforms that you can actually get your content placed on.
I did not try and form a comprehensive list for each specific niche. I did however, choose platforms where YOU can upload your own unique content*. By doing this, I tried to cut down on some outreach time while still allowing you to gain brand exposure.
So what are you waiting for, read on and get your content on :)
*excluding Longreads
Video
Video content is like the new “sliced bread”. Where were we before it? Video content is becoming increasingly more important through blended searches and allows brands to break up walls of text. However, when I refer to video content I’m not referring to basic Q&A video content or testimonials. I’m suggesting you create non-promotional video content that is aesthetically creative *gasp* The key to video communities (and why most fail) is that they’re too self-serving and brand boosting. RESIST THE URGE!
WHO DOES IT WELL: The Desperados Experience
Youtube I couldn’t talk about video communities without including Youtube! If you have any type of videos, make sure you create a brand channel and upload all of your videos.
Data Visualization
Although infographics are great when you have a story to tell, (that’s key! Actually have something to say, if not your infographic will be crap.) I’ll be focusing on data visualization. If you have market/customer data at your disposal, turn it into something! Whether it’s static, animated or interactive, you should put all that research to good use and get it in front of a data-loving audience.
WHO DOES IT WELL: Uber
Images
Big high-res images are all the rage and I have to say, I’m a fan! I’ve been seeing ecommerce sites and blogs transitioning from regular thumbnail images to huge images taking up some prime above-the fold real-estate. If you‘re looking to get people talking, linking, and sharing your images, invest in some photography.
WHO DOES IT WELL: Fab
Long-form
What happened to the good ‘ole days when you’d sit down with the paper and read (from beginning to end) a multi-page piece? Although those instances are becoming few and far between, the resurgence of long-form content is on the rise. People may like getting to the point quickly, but if a story warrants a deep dive don’t be afraid to go there and go all in.
WHO DOES IT WELL: The New Yorker
Main Takeaways
Find a specific audience for your content, outside of your site.
By looking to target different audiences for a certain type of content, you are actively pushing your brands exposure and not resting on what you already have. In order to gain new customers you have to be thinking about new opportunities and how you can penetrate different markets. To do this, creating content specific materials is key.
Create content that provides value for that content community.
Once you identify a new market, (like all forms of linkbuilding) you have to create something of value. If your materials offer little value to your new community you will be burning your new found bridge. Pro tip: produce something people will actually care about.
Have fun with it!
Not everything should (or needs to be) a sales pitch. Make sure your content falls in line with the tone & feel of previously posted content. If your content sticks out like a sore thumb, you most likely won’t get any traction. Although you might get the urge, or internal pressure, to plaster your company’s name everywhere - don’t. Branding too much will appear as if you’re trying to get something out it (not received well).
Don’t half a** it.
If your content stinks and you put it out to a community who is passionate for long-form, they’ll call you out and you don’t want that sort of attention. Like everything your produce, you should be confident and proud with what you’re putting out. If you’re not, go back and try harder.
Don’t rest on your brands laurels.
Push your content outside of your company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts and don’t rely on them to do all the work. If you want to grow your audience and your brand than move outside of what you normally do. Your brand is only as strong as you make it.
Hi Julianne,
Thanks for the information here and when it comes to content marketing, I totally agree with you when you say that one needs to have a clear understanding of why the content is produced and who the target audience is, something which very few people understand. But when it comes to small brands it really does become a herculean task, especially when you are dealing with small brands that belong to a very niche category.
In such cases before any content marketing initiatives are taken it kind of becomes imperative to establish the brand as kind of a big player in that niche and that can be achieved through paid content marketing strategies like Press releases i.e. PR Web and then follow up with Display and Banner Ads that will play a significant role in such cases, probably more than conventional PPC ads on Google. Honestly this might be one of those cases where citations and local results will play a bigger role than Social Media platforms in the initial stages.
The next step would be to identify brand endorsers in that niche, tie up with them and then exploit their traffic and Brand. The bottom-line here being that initial investment is required to give that required push and highlight the brand.
Having established the brand, the concept of engaging the customers will come into play and that’s where great content needs to generated. People might not agree with my theory and say
"Dude you are talking crap, Produce great content and over TIME You will see the results".
Please note the highlighted word, TIME, something that very few clients have and understand and hence from a practical point of view it would probably make sense to initially help the client to establish the brand and then shift focus to content marketing.
All the other viral strategies that you have mentioned above will fall in place, be it videos or infographics etc. BTW not sure how many of you have tried Panoramio but it's a brilliant citation tool, highlight being the Geo Tag feature.
PS - Regarding content marketing i am bluntly assuming that the client will have content writers at their end, in case they do not have one then probably the overall cost will increase when a content writer is hired :)
- Sajeet
Panoramio is wonderful... and - let me be "nationalist" once - it was created in Spain :).
Yes, I've used it and like it too.
Excellent post and thanks for pointing me toward "communities" that I didn't know about.
But I would like to take a different approach from the one you take: if we say "content is king", and the same would be if we were saying Link building is King, we can fall in the error of fixating our attention is creating great content which it will be ineffective.
I know you write that we have to create content that fills the needs and curiosities of our audience, but it is for that same reason that we should have to say: USER IS KING.
Just once we have that statement as fundational mantra of our strategy, then we will have all other areas (content, Seo and social) well focused and the efforts we put in developing them with a big chance to be effective.
If we concentrate just on other supposed kings, we can end in painful mistakes as content which doesn't resonate as we thought it should be, or Seo only based actions (which are right now as saying limitating our outreach potential) and inefficient social buzz.
This is certainly a challenging time to a lot of my clients at the moment, many of whom have had websites for a large number of years and which have all worked very well for them These websites have traditionally generated not-insignificant amounts of passive income - now it's a re-education process in which I'm trying to tell them that part of the reason that they aren't getting the same returns as they used to is because they really don't have much of a content strategy,l that they need to be putting information out there that their potential customers want to consume. In reality many of them find this very difficult to get their head around and I'm statring to think a lot of them will fall away to be replaced by the next generation of website owners who are much more internet marketing focussed. I suppose this is only right really!
The thing about Inbound Marketing that I think a lot of these people find difficult to get their heads around is it's not as cheap as the methods they've been using to date and it requires them to completely revisit their business models.
Thanks for bringing my attention to a few new websites that I didn't already know about! Great to see Longform and Longreads being included in there!
Producing great content is such a challenge as the web appears saturated with the "standard" or "easy" content you can produce moderately quickly. Finding a completely different angle or viewpoint to provide something new and valuable to readers takes (lets be honest) a whole lot more effort and time (!) and its hard to produce these items as frequently as is ideal. I'd be interested to hear viewpoints on the longevity of content, I appreciate this would vary according to quality, target demographic and industry but some guidelines post-Panda 3.3 would be great!
Great post and very useful resources, I can't wait to see what happens with Pinterest.
Content is definitely the King!! But remember overdoing it may kill your reputation. I have seen many people writing countless lines just to make sure that they have enough content to attract google crawlers (the content could be an informative article, a sound clip or a visual). Do remember when a visitor actually is looking for something, he won't keep on reading the whole stuff to find the gem. So it is always better to keep it to the point without appending useless stuff around it. Gracias!!
I completely agree with you, we should consider user and not search engine while creating content...
Yes I agree with you people. No doubt Content is the King. But one thing I need to focus that, content should be precise and information rich. Because we all are suffering from lacks of TIME.
Nice post Julianne and another SEO that is highlighting pinterest along with other communities as one to consider. I think it is very exciting that pinterest is growing in popularity everyday! It is definitely one to watch and consider in your strategy to expand brand reach and gain links!
we've been having great success with Reddit and Stumble upon for additional website traffic. If you're not using these two already, I would check them out
Hey there! Can you share any info on how you use Stubm;e Upon and Redditt? Really interested in those two. Thanks
great article!
ps: you're missing a : just after 'http' in the link to https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/the-time-for-content-marketing-is-now/ in the first paragraph.
Link fixed: thanks :D
Great post, I loved the Content 2020 videos.
Great post Julianne,
Thank you for all of these great resources to use when trying to promote/spread content.
Also, this ties in with Rands WBF a week or two ago that shows how to leverage blog owners with big subscriber counts or lots of followers (if anyone missed this, it's a must watch.) The key is creating something that these communities would actually love to read or (in some cases) need to read.
I get tired of saying it too... But CONTENT IS KING!
That will never change.
Thank you Julianne! Several good options to have a more "wide" website.
Great post Julianne..
you have illustarated some really key players in the content community. My concerns about Vimeo and Dailymotion would be, do they get as much exposure as Youtube and will Google stop indexing them at some point.
Content that is relevant to the business in my market seems manufactured at times. As if it is a bunch of boilerplate jargon spun twenty different ways and regurgitated out to look different, but it is all the same. I wonder if these new platforms will help with more 'original" content.
Great post. It's awesome to see people getting creative with their content marketing strategies. It's just raising the bar for the rest of the industry. There will always be a surplus of platforms, but how you use them is everything!
Great post Julianne. I think you've highlighted some really important points here, not least being that not every kind of content, or content community, works for every niche. It's important to take this into account and not just go after the "shiny new toy" (ahem Pinterest) that comes along every month, simply because it is there.
Well done!
I have loved Pinterest until a month or two ago when everyone freaked out about it and every marketer in the world started using it. Now we don't even get "do follow" links from them. How would you suggest breaking into niche content communities?
In the long run customer satisfaction & customer service is king.. if you care about it your seo efforts will always be on right track.. no matter whether it is content curaiton or data analytics or on page seo or your link building program. focusing on customer satisfaction .. trying to please them with improving quality.. bridging gap between what they need and what you can offer can do same effect what full time seo team can not do..
"Content may be king but Intent is emperor"
And after King and Emperor what will we invent? God? #justsayin :D
Good post Julianne but the era of monarchy is over. There is no king or queen in the world of inbound marketing. Nothing works in solo here. You need a good budget and effective outreach as much as you need good contents and audience who show interest in what you say and share/link out to it.
Yes Content is King and if we put content in keeping targetted Audience with targetted Keywords in mind than it definitely works!!!
There is a lot of useful information here, good article!
Content is king. Thanks for the detailed post.
Content is key to any large scale strategy, but first thing you need to do is make sure you have a SEO friendly platform to work with and make sure it is a sub folder on your website.
A great example of a website which is making people share content is a campaign run by "Bonds" in Australia, problem is the website is very poor, sure the idea is great but the implementation has been shocking.
What this campaign does is allow the general public to pick up a day and they get a free t-shirt for that day, first in for their date gets the t-shirt, then you get your image on the website with the date: Website for this campaign example here: https://www.wearebonds.com.au/
This is an example of an idea to leverage content but it has not been implemented correctly, I am not working on this campaign.
Really interesting article, lots of practical advice which is very useful - thank you :-)
Alexis
Agree, to attract future prospects, quality & compelling content at every stage of the buying cycle is must. But without well-defined strategies, implementation and objectives even the most outstanding content risks fails. Think what business need? Is it just clicks, likes, share, plus, impressions?
It is Revenue $$$$$$ ........
Very good post... Congratulations!
Content is king, most of use would agreed this statement. But there are so many other factors those are interlink with content and those are "SEO structure, Social Media" i call them Queen.
King really needs a Queen to survive in this part of world.
I love this comment Khalid. As they say, behind every successful man, there is a woman!