CONTENT MARKETING


From left: Simon Heyes 8 Million Stories; Paul Hunter Liberty Marketing; Cat Botibol PD3; Simon Douglas Curated Digital.


Content Marketing Seminar Roundup


Content marketing leaders explain how to create, curate, measure and maximise your content


Content is an integral part of any brand’s engagement strategy. But ensuring the content is useful, shareable, fi ndable and entertaining is a challenge many brands struggle with. And how can you prove its value to the business? Figaro Digital hosted an event on June 23, with talks from digital marketing leaders at 8 Million Stories, Liberty Marketing, pd3 and Curated Digital, off ering advice on how marketers can make the most of their content marketing strategies. Here’s a roundup of the main takeaway points from the seminar:


How To Monetise Your Content Marketing Most brands know they need to think more like publishers and create regular content, according to Simon Heyes, MD at 8 Million Stories. “The challenge is how do you know the great content you are creating really is great?” he explains. 8 Million Stories believes content marketing should be treated like any other marketing channel and tied back to a focussed set of objectives. 8 Million Stories outlined a top


level process and the overarching principles for devising and implementing eff ective content monetisation strategies. Set objectives, research your audience, plan content based on these researched areas, develop the content, distribute the content and measure success. It’s a framework that 8 Million Stories follows at all times and it has set the company in good stead.


How Emotions Play an Essential Part in Content Marketing Success There’s a huge amount of content out there and there’s really a lot more supply than demand. There are two million blog posts uploaded every day and every hour there are more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube. “There’s just too much content


Liberty


Marketing’s 6 emotions to


consider when


creating content: SURPRISE


Share new ideas, state a startling fact, ask a proactive question


JOY


Positive stories surrounding your products,


services or target personas


FEAR Risky. Include


possible solutions to the fear


causing problem


you’ve presented SADNESS


Depending on story, but be respectful.


ANGER


Provide solutions DISGUST


Generally does not appeal to mass groups


and a lot of it is produced without any kind of strategy,” Paul Hunter, SEO account co-ordinator, Liberty Marketing, notes. “B2B marketing companies in the USA, for example, are wasting $958m each year on content marketing. 25 cents out of every dollar is wasted on ineffi cient and ineff ective content marketing. Everyone knows content marketing is important but there’s just too much content for content’s sake.” With so much content being


produced, it’s more diffi cult than ever to stand out from the crowd and make an impact with your content, but Paul explained how incorporating emotion into your content marketing strategy can boost user engagement and social reach.


Creative Content – Practical Tips On How To Make More Of It “I see a lot of content out there that isn’t that good – that’s a bit sh#t,” Cat Botibol, owner and creative chief, pd3, says. “But that‘s an opportunity for us to go out and make something better.”


When Cat talks about content she’s talking about more than just words. She’s also talking about pictures, moving pictures, sounds,


moments, events and experiences. Practical advice Cat off ered included focusing on internal staff training days, as well as internal comms, running photo, video and copy competitions. “If you work in a company with 500 employees I bet there’s someone who’s really great at taking photos,” she says. “You’ve just got to fi nd them, so maybe organise an internal competition that involves taking a photo.”


Other tips included raiding the


archives – what can be repurposed? If you’re at a relatively new company and you don’t have an archive, think about the heritage of your sector Cat is also a massive fan of stock


libraries. “They’re amazing,” she says. “You just have to be creative in the way that you search through them then you can fi nd some really good stuff that you can repurpose for your own needs.”


Using Content Marketing To Sell Old fashioned SEO tactics such as researching keyword volume to map intent, and diligence in analysing competitors are fi ne but will only get you so far. Once you’ve got someone to your website, it’s language that’s going to do the work: language that’s engaging, expert and draws readers on to the bitter end. Simon Douglass, founder,


Curated Digital, says his fi rst tip is to spend time manually researching the space you’re planning to market in. “Done properly, content marketing can be used to sell stuff ,” Simon assures us. “But in order to do it successfully it does take a lot of time and most of the stuff we’ve done was very manual. “Understand what people are


searching for then try to deliver them something back, which will answer their questions,” he adds. This is something he fi nds is not happening regularly enough.


51 issue 28 summer 2016


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