Do you have a favourite business blogger? Somebody whose content you make a point of reading? On the other hand do you know people who make you think ‘not THEM again’ before hitting the delete button. How did they get to achieve their superstar status or notoriety? And what should this tell you about your own approach to content based marketing?
Nobody has a right to be heard
I’m only talking about marketing here, by the way, before somebody accuses me of being authoritarian. The fact that you’ve decided to publish blog articles and distribute them via social media and email is of no consequence to anyone but you. You have to earn the right to get your content noticed, which means taking a few fundamental points on board.
Content marketing requires patience
Having committed yourself, and the time and energy of your organisation, to this new approach to marketing you want to see measurable results. The danger is that impatience slips in and you start to use your blog and social media channels as another traditional marketing channel. Occasionally you see folks who don’t even bother with the pretence and just blast LinkedIn and Twitter with sales messages thinly disguised as blogs from day 1. This latter approach is nothing to do with content marketing in my view, it’s just advertising done badly and inappropriately.
Once you have the image of being a spammer or somebody who uses social media as a sales channel, it’s hard to shake that off – you’ve created a ‘delete reflex’. The focus has to be on earning respect and earning authority. This takes both time and a sustained investment in high quality content that people will value.
The objective, particularly early on, is to build respect and engagement. Having measurable results is a good thing, but make sure they relate to the objective of the activity. Relevant measurements would be follows, blog subscribers, re-tweets, comments on your blog or LinkedIn discussions, rather than hard sales.
Reasons people will engage with your content
I talked in a bit more depth in a recent article about giving your business blog personality. In summary, people will read your content if it does some or most of the following:
- Enhances their understanding
- Develops their thinking
- Provides insights that are unique
- Entertains
- Provokes questions and discussions
Above all it has to be relevant to the people you want to engage. Before you write a single blog post (or produce any other type of content), have a really clear picture in your mind of who you want to engage and what they would find valuable.
So why bother?
If your objective is simply to get more customers similar to your existing ones for your existing products, and you need these quickly, then content marketing is not the way to get them. Content will still work over time as you build awareness and trust among people who may have been resistant to your traditional sales and marketing efforts. These people may also be outside of your traditional marketing network but are part of the huge marketing network called the worldwide web. The content approach is still valid.
If you want to move your business forward so that you are doing higher value work for higher value clients, content marketing is definitely the way to go. Engaging these clients with your content means they are engaging with the way you think and the way you do things. You are getting them to think about their own business in different ways. You are getting them to ask questions: are they doing things in the most efficient and effective ways and are their existing suppliers delivering the best value?
When they want answers to these questions, who are they going to contact?
So where does the selling come in?
To a large extent your content is doing the selling for you – building awareness and building trust. You should also include calls to action in your content, but keep them subtle and discreet. I think that If you’d like to talk about this in more detail, call us on… works better than Call us today to see what we can do for your business. Also, as you’ve built up a subscriber list through your blog you can also use this to distribute the occasional promotion along with some helpful content, people are more likely to be receptive because you’ve earned their attention and respect.
Richard Hussey, Freelance Copywriter and Content Marketing Specialist.
If you’d like to chat about how you could use content to win higher value business call me on 01823 674167 or email richard@rshcopywriting.co.uk.gridhosted.co.uk
Thank you for the post – very informative – the 3 “R’s” – The Right, the Respect and the Reason – like the original 3 “R’s” they all take time, practise and some effort to master and you (me!) will always have those examples of blogs that we have posted that have not quite done what we expected or wanted them to do. As the post says it’s about engaging those people in the way that you are thinking and the way you do things that hopefully will get them thinking about their business differently and consequently look to the people (you) who can help them!
I think that’s it Sean. It is about consistently producing content that people think is worth reading. The biggest dangers are trying to sell aggressively and letting standards slip because you’re pushed for time but haven’t published anything for a while. It’s not an easy balance but then nothing worth having comes easily.