If You Give a Mouse Some Content...

There’s no captive audience online. The captive audience is long dead. There are literally billions of choices on what someone can view online and I assure you they don’t want to be viewing lame content -- not with so many other choices out there. They’ll either ignore it or go elsewhere.

Those billions of choices aren’t just your direct competitors either. You are competing with YouTube videos, blogs like perezhilton.com or peopleofwalmart.com (love it!), news websites and online games. You compete with all of them for your audience’s attention.


We are publishers.

So what are we to do as marketers/public relations professionals/advertisers? The answer is… publish.

Does your organization think of itself as a publisher? Think of how much content your organization publishes. I believe that it is much more than you’d suspect; a whitepaper, a blog post, an email newsletter, a pamphlet, a Facebook status update, an article, a story, a podcast… I could go on forever. That is all content that we publish.

As publishers our goal must be to deliver valuable information to “customers” so that over time, they see the value of our content and reward us with their loyalty and support. It’s a reciprocal relationship. We give something to our customers and they give something back to us -- it could be an email newsletter sign-up, a “like” or a monetary donation.

This need to deliverable valuable and interesting content to your audience has created a whole new branch on the tree of marketing. This new branch is called content strategy or content marketing (I use them interchangeably), which I define as the practice of creating and disseminating content to enhance organizational goals and inform action.


Content matters.

Marketers have caught on. A recent study performed just this year by Junta42, an agency that focuses on content marketing, conducted a survey and found that of the 300 organizations that participated in the study:

• spend 33% of their total marketing budget (up 11% from 2008) on content marketing;
• smaller organizations spend 2x that of larger organizations on content marketing;
• and 60% of organizations plan to increase their content marketing this year.
  

This demonstrates to me that content is just too important, and provides too many benefits, to be ignored. When done right, content strategy reinforces your branding and messaging, educates your audience, drives traffic, conversions and action, and increases your share of voice online.


Get it going.

Because content strategy as a practice is relatively new, many organizations still don’t know how to get it going. Here’s my six step process for establishing your content strategy:

• Step One - Audit. In the first step you want to figure out where you stand in terms of your content strategy and where your competitors stand. When you think about that, don’t necessarily think of it just in terms of strategies and tactics. What about organizational buy-in. Do your superiors have enough information to make an informed decision that allows you to spend money on content strategy?
  
  
• Step Two – Plan. So now that you know where you stand you can figure out where you want to go. What are the organizational goals? How do you reinforce them with your content strategy? Where do your stakeholders engage with you online? The answers to these questions should strongly influence the direction of your content strategy. By answering these questions you should be able to establish the framework of your content strategy strategic plan.
  
  
• Step Three – Spec. Now you need to start thinking through the logistics. Who is going to own this content strategy within your organization? Do you need a content strategist or will you tap your subject matter experts to generate and disseminate this content? Where is this content going to live and what are the limitations of this platform? For example, if you decide that YouTube videos are one of the tactics you’ll employ as part of your content strategy, you are going to need to know the parameters of that platform (e.g. file size, file type)
  
  
• Step Four – Create. Now you are at the point of really having a strategy so this is the point where you’ll want to start collecting content that supports your strategy. In some cases this might be content that has already been produced that simply needs to be re-purposed. In other instances you may need to create this content from scratch. At the heart of this process needs to lay the “Why?” Why have you selected this content and is it relevant to the audience? If you can’t confidently provide an answer to the “Why?” than it shouldn't be part of your content.
  
  
• Step Five – Market. At this point you are ready to being marketing the content. You do that by integrating across multiple channels or by tapping the relationships that you have already established in the digital space and asking them to share your content. As an example, what if you produced a whitepaper that pointed people to your blog to read more articles and commentary that deal with the issue. Or, if you produce a print brochure why not turn it into a digital brochure with interactive features and post it to a campaign landing page. That’s integration.
  
  
• Step Six – Measure. Finally, measure the success of your strategy. Use analytics to see what is working and what is not. Analytics will also help you identify new audiences. Pay attention to what your online audience is talking about and use that to help tailor your content strategy.
  

Closing thoughts.

Before you venture into content marketing there are a few final items you should consider.

Don’t forget to communicate. You cannot expect to have a strong content strategy if people are working in silos. The owner of your content strategy needs to work with subject matter experts, your research team, your communications team, etc. to source great content.

It is also necessary to add sizzle by taking risks. Be provocative – it encourages conversation, debate and sharing. It also makes the content sticky (meaning that people come back again and again to check it out.)

Finally, I will leave you with this… content marketing is like the mouse in the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If you consistently produce good content that your viewers enjoy and engage with you will start to build a habit with them. They will come to expect good content from you and they will want more – just like how the mouse wanted a cookie, then milk, then a napkin...

Do your organization engage in content strategy? Share your experience in the comments below.