What’s your Content Strategy?
5 Dec 2019
5 Dec 2019
It’s now well established that every business has some sort of content sharing strategy in place. It could be sharing videos or gifs on a social media platform or posting articles on the company blog.
It is also now well acknowledged by brands and content marketers alike that the kind of content you post should factor in the platform you are posting it on. So, you might post links and industry news or GIFs on Twitter, while you may post high-resolution photos or stories on Instagram. While that is one part of your content strategy, there’s another more important question you would need to ask yourself — the content itself.
Whether you post a video or a blog post, pay attention to the purpose each piece of content serves. Now, when you think of your audience, as a PR firm you are going to think of posting content that maybe of interest to your clients and their audiences (who eventually become your audience). These could be news stories or research papers, studies or white papers pertaining to the industries your top clients belong to. Your content could also be useful information not just aimed at your client/customer base but potential customers or general readers as well.
However, while it is appreciable that you are posting useful content, pause and think what the industry-related links, useful guides and articles are actually doing. Your audience may engage with them but they are also leaving your website or social media page. Without a doubt, your audience has benefited from your content but how many of them end up having brand recall about your company? The links or articles you post clearly don’t encourage your audience to stay on your company website or blog. Your readers aren’t spending enough time with you. Star Squared PR deploys a well thought through approach to retain visitors on the page and to encourage them to share among their followers.
The other end of the content marketing spectrum is posting too much promotional material. This will erode trust, and the audience may not take you seriously or consider you a credible source of information.
So, how do you structure your content? There are several rules of thumb cited by content strategists. There’s 4:1:1 where 4 stands for giving, 1 for sharing and 1 for asking. Accordingly, you should have four posts that are educational and not specific to your company, one post should have a soft-promotional touch, while one post is a call to action one. Then, there is the golden 80:20 rule, where 80 per cent of all your content should educate, be useful or entertain your audience while the remaining 20 per cent has to be allocated to promotions.
The best approach is to ensure that you while you provide interesting content to your clients or potential clients, you also ensure you draw your audience to your website. You would need to encourage them to spend time on your site. How would you achieve that? By generating content on the blog — be it in the form of a webinar or a study. It could also be in the form of a series of explainer videos/articles or DIY content. This content can incorporate industry insights and newsworthy studies to make it useful and informative. If you can make your content both informative and entertaining, then you sure would have hit the sweet spot. This way, you are engaging your prospective and present clients on your website. These options help you achieve two things at the same time: offer engaging content without being overly promotional or pushy and at the same encouraging your audience to stay on your company blog, website or social media pages.
Achieving a brand reputation and credibility is all about providing a seamless, authentic and steady source of engaging and informative content that customers will come to rely on. Star Squared PR aims to deploy a 360 approach when it comes to content managements strategies. The key is to factor in multiple variables such as USP, Competition, Trends, Key Words, etc when it comes to fashioning a Content strategy for a brand.
