I've got good news and bad news for
business owners when it comes to maintaining a widely projected and
effective brand in today's marketplace. Whereas the Internet didn't
even exist, for all intents and purposes, just a few decades ago,
today online is the ubiquitous platform where people search for
products and services and where products and services aggressively
make themselves known to consumers and clients. Businesses do it
through content-rich websites, thorough social media pages,
captivating tweets and postings, bountiful blogs and all sorts of
other formats and applications on the Web. The bad news is, if
you own a business- large or small- you will almost certainly need to
be maximizing and optimizing your Internet presence if you aren't
already. The good news is, that such activity does not have to
cost an arm and a leg. In fact, due to the nature of the online world
and the types of content to which people gravitate, what content you
don't do yourself (or have your in-house staff handle for you) you
could probably get done for a mere small toe or rarely used back
tooth. What's important is finding the correct and necessary mix of
quantity and quality in your content.
The currently hot term “content
marketing” refers to the creation and posting by
businesses- usually on their websites or blogs to start- of helpful,
informative, conversational, rather deep analyses into topics and
issues which are likely of interest to potential customers of their
product or service. This type of content is not just an ad or a sales
blurb for a specific thing they're selling. It's more like an article
you'd find in a magazine or online periodical. It covers a topic more
generally and cares value for the reader completely separate from
whether or not they buy a certain product. It enriches,
edifies and often entertains,
giving the reader something highly beneficial to take with them
regardless of whether they become a client or customer.
For instance, a dog food company may offer high-quality content on
its site about maintaining a dog's coat, proper canine dental care,
and ideas for vigorous exercise outings for dogs with their owners,
and while such content may indirectly lead a customer to the purchase
of their dog food, each of those articles is excellent and useful
free information the reader can take with them no matter what dog
food they buy, and even if they buy no dog food at all, but instead
make their own. In a sense, this kind of free-standing marketing
content represents a welcome burst of integrity and principles into
the world of commerce and consumerism.
Businesses
today are encouraged to create a community of meaning and affinity
and with that comes a lot of freely offered content that can be
advisory, enlightening, technical, inspiring or even really funny.
Even if the business doesn't directly mention or link to their own
products or services in the content piece, it is thought that by
winning the trust and good will of the reader with such valuable
words, images or video, the reader is likely to feel warmth and
loyalty toward the brand and its products or services in the future.
Either way, there is often a real integrity within content marketing
to make the content really good for its own sake, to have the content
live up to standards found in journalism and publishing.
Another
potentially powerful area that even businesses without huge manpower
or budgets can readily compete for eyeballs is social
media.
Informative, clever, provocative or funny tweets, Facebook posts or
Instagram photo-captions can create a growing following and draw in
new people from the social media stream who happen upon them.
An excellent and highly advantageous
tool to use in both your content marketing pieces and your social
media is humor. Sharp, topical, appropriate humor cuts
through the sea of boring, dry, technical or serious sales-driven
content out there, and wins over viewers who are potential clients or
customers. When a brand uses humor, it wins good will from
readers and offers something that's entertaining, fun and likable as
opposed to the old arm-twisting hard sell. Look at incredibly
successful brands like Snapple, Trader Joe's, Dollar Shave Club and
State Farm. Whether right on their products, in their online or hard
paper content, on their social media, or in their TV commercials,
they present their serious products (beverages, groceries, shaving
tools, insurance) with a whimsical and enjoyable sense of humor.
They don't take themselves or their product too seriously, and yet
through a deft combination of funny and informative, we
end up having a better idea of the details of what they're
offering and we actually trust them more.
If creating sharp, cutting-edge
humorous content marketing and
social media feels
out of the grasp of you or your employees, it would be extremely well
worth it to hire a proven professional who can create this content
for you, thus elevating your brand and increasing your revenues.
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