How To Crush Your Competition With Content Marketing
Guest blog by Zac Averett
How To Crush Your Competition With Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a very key piece in getting your company a leg up on the competition. Content is everywhere and we consume it every day. Nowadays people would rather watch a video or look at a photo instead of reading an entire essay about something. Content marketing allows you to build brand loyalty and become more personable with your consumers/followers.
The Platforms you post your content on are forms of Macro Content and the content you post on those platforms are micro-content. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk built up his father’s wine business and turned it into a multimillion-dollar company. Later he started many more huge companies like Vaynersports, and Vaynermedia and put out tons of micro-content and still to this day puts out tons of micro-content. Gary is constantly telling his followers to put out tons of micro-content to help them improve their businesses. Micro Content is one of the keys to getting a leg up in your business but where do we post all this micro-content and what exactly is micro-content?
Different types of content and what they can do for you.
What are the different types of micro-content? Videos, photos, Tweets, Stories, and Blog Posts are all forms of micro-content. Each form of micro-content can affect the customer or followers in a different way.
Videos
Videos tend to hit more on the emotional side and can allow you to connect with your followers/customers in a more personal way. They can take longer to produce but the more time you take on them the more you can tap into someone’s emotions. It’s up to you to know if what this video you’re putting out to your macro content platforms needs to be emotional or not. Sometimes Videos can be pushed too hard emotionally and it can cause the viewer to feel like it was faked or exaggerated to get their attention so it is important to know why you’re putting out a video and who your audience is.
Photos
Photos are a great way to connect with your audience. They can add some emotion, you can produce lots of it in a shorter amount of time, and it doesn’t risk feeling like it was forced emotion or faked as much as a video.
Photos are a great way to quickly highlight an event your company participated in, show off a new product/service, or even give some background on your company and get personal with your audience if you don’t have the time for a video. They are also a good way to keep consistency with your posts on macro content and keep a consistent theme or style of your brand. Photos are great and all but they also don’t keep a user engaged as a video, tweet, or story would so you run the risk of low engagement on that post but it’s good to mix it up and combine photos and videos to keep it interesting with your audience on macro content.
Tweets
Tweets are an awesome way of connecting with your consumer/audience. They are often underestimated in what they can do for a company. Wendy’s and several other companies have found that instead of normal photos and videos about products or lame product tweets that Tweeting funny comments on consumers tweets or replying to tweets in a funny way has created more brand loyalty and publicity for their company. Wendy’s is now known for their roasts on twitter to other companies and consumers and it has shown to be a great way to connect with a consumer/audience. Tweets are such a good way to connect in fun or funny way but you also need to be careful with what you say because if someone takes it the wrong way or doesn’t like the way you replied it could put a bad reputation on your company.
Facebook and Instagram Stories
Stories are an awesome way to quickly put out something for your company and reach your audience. They allow you to create a post in seconds and gives you many creative tools to make a creative post. Stories are most common on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook but other companies like youtube are trying to implement it onto their mobile version of their platforms.
These are a great way to interact with your consumers/audience because they allow you to repost a story or post from someone who has tagged your company in it. Stories can create brand loyalty because everyone loves to be recognized by a company they follow and admire. Stories are great for building brand loyalty but they only last for 24 hours which can be a downside for your company or it can be a great thing for your company depending on what you’re putting out. Fortunately, Social media platforms like Instagram have created a highlight section that allows you to add a bunch of related stories you’ve posted and have them accessible to new and old users who see your profile.
Blog Posts
Blog posts are an awesome way to put out content. They allow you to add a photo and have a blog just right on your website for when your audience/consumer comes to check out your website. Blog posts are great for letting your user know what you’re up to, what is coming soon, or giving advice to the consumer on how to use your product/service to benefit the consumer better. Blog posts are also awesome for building up Search Engine Optimization (SEO). “In addition to what I just mentioned, I continually post “micro-content”, that is distributed to my Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora, and many of my other social channels.” That’s Gary Vaynerchuk talking about how he distributes his micro-content. For more information and examples on types of content marketing visit the blog page on my website.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a very beneficial and easy way to reach consumers and is one of the most recognized by consumers. Content marketing is a great way to build brand loyalty, tap into your customers/audiences emotions, and to build your brand awareness. Building brand awareness and brand loyalty are very important to have because they both bring in more sales for your company. Brand loyalty is the tendency of your customers or audience to purchase your product or service more than once. Brand awareness is how well your customers or potential customers know who your brand is and what your brand offers.
Managing content across your social platforms (Macro content)
Managing your content across your social media channels is important to keep in mind. Reusing content across different social media channels can be great but you don’t want to over use something and end up looking like your brand is being lazy and using a grab bag of extra content. A great way to keep track of what your posting and when it goes up is using a spreadsheet or a content calendar. Content calendars are great because they allow you to assign projects to each team member, assign due dates, track what piece of content goes on each social media channel.
Spreadsheets/Excel do a lot of the same thing as a content calendar and are often free except you can’t assign a project to each team member, and get notified when a project is complete. A great way to keep track of what content you are posting and the type of content you are putting out on social media platforms is a content strategy. “Social Media is the perfect way to show off your personality, and your content. You need to be strategic with your posts, switching it up for different social platforms.” – Jeff Bullas (10 tactics you must use in your content marketing).
Why should you use a content marketing strategy?
What is a content strategy? A Content Strategy is transforming your business objectives and goals into content that helps you achieve those objectives and goals.
Why is this important? Content strategies are helpful to keep your brand organized when making content and helps you keep your goals and objectives as a company in mind when making content as mentioned earlier. They also help you to keep track of what social media channels you are targeting more and how you’re targeting users. Content strategies are great for keeping a theme or feel to your brand. This is important to keep in mind so that your customers/audience doesn’t get confused and tune out what you do or what your brand personality is.
Content marketing is an awesome way to help build brand loyalty, brand awareness, and get a leg up on your competition. Content marketing allows you to connect on a personal level with your customers/audiences and generate more sales of your product/service. Constantly putting out micro-content on your macro content platforms is super important to keep your company/brand relevant. Content is a great way to get your audience engaged more than reading an article/essay your company has put out. It’s important to have a content strategy in mind when making your content to keep consistency and build better brand awareness and brand loyalty. Remember to make a content calendar to manage where you’re putting out content, what type of content you are putting out, and when you’re putting it out.