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Want to improve business results with a content marketing strategy? With the avalanche of opinion, articles and research on what’s working now (and what isn’t) understanding how best to make an impact, and see a positive ROI on your investment should be easy, right? Not necessarily, because the in-depth research takes time. And translating theory into concrete steps isn’t always easy.
Here we’ve done some of the hard work for you, distilling the best of the best into a list of what you should be reading and thinking about. And we’ve overlaid this with our experience helping our own financial services clients with their content marketing strategies.
So here it is. The top five recurring themes based on our analysis of the most shared, most liked articles on the subject right now.
- Visual content wins. Key stats from Jesse Mawhinney’s “17 stats you should know about visual content marketing in 2105”, which looks at visual content in social media, bears this out. Let’s take Twitter for example. Not only did tweets with images receive 150% more retweets in 2014, but adding a photo URL to a tweet can boost retweets by 35%.
- Razor sharp people-focus is key to engagement. Honing in on an individual’s interests and preferences will require moving well beyond traditional demographics and segmentation. According to MashableAustralia’s blog – “10 predictions for content marketing in 2015”, 2015 will be all about delivering the right content, to the right person, at the right time … every time. To get it so right, the first question you ask should be: “Will my customers find this useful”.
- Focus on owned and off-line channels. Again, according to Mashable, strategies will move beyond the limitations of ‘social’ and ‘mobile’, towards owned and offline, enabling brands to grow their audience on their own terms.
- Great stories are shared more often, so storytellers will be in hot demand. According to Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, marketers aren’t traditionally great storytellers, and non-media companies will look to fleece media companies of their journalists, editors and broadcasters.
- Value comes from distribution. Companies will learn that publishing is only step one. In “The top 7 content market trends that will dominate 2015”, Jayson DeMers says great content is only as effective as its distribution strategy. Optimising for search and mobile, building relationships with branded publications, and reaching out to influencers in your field are some of the ways to ensure your content gets out there.
Familiar as most of these themes are, focusing on what’s likely to work and taking the steps required to achieve measurable outcomes can be two quite different challenges. Each of these articles “walk the talk”, both telling a compelling story and offering actionable tips on getting started – and continuing.
