I was recently asked if I would be a conversation starter for the Social Media Roundtable discussion at the PR Council of Lake County meeting this upcoming Thursday. I use to be the chair of this amazing group of people, so it is always a privilege to share my knowledge with the group and learn what they are working on and how we can help each other. Anytime I start a topic on Social Media, marketing, blogging, etc, I always start by asking, who in attendance has a Content Strategy.
When I ask this question, I get a good feel for the attendees knowledge and expertise level, but I usually receive a 50/50 response to sometimes 3/4 of the audience saying they have one. Which is good but is it working with their social strategy is the next thing that is on my mind.
Why do I start off the conversation with that? Well, I believe that your Traditional Marketing, Social Media and Content should all be working as one. You want to create content that will resonate and speak to your audience. It is not about you, it’s about your audience. Good content that resonates with your audience will always top good advertising. The content will be able to live forever and can be searchable long after you initially share it. Creating good content will benefit your business in many ways. You will not only increase website visits but you will increase repeat visits to your website. Your Social Media audience will grow organically and there is nothing better than people finding and engaging with you online. Plus, your newsletter list will grow, as people will sign up to receive emails from you knowing that you will be delivering information that are looking for.
But why will they want to sign up for your newsletter, follow you on Social Media and come back to your website? They will want to because you are providing them with information that they want, information that they need. Social Media is a great tool to source what your audience is looking for, by testing different topics and asking questions of your audience. If you utilize Google analytics, you can see what people are searching your site for and determine your blog topics. Both are great ways to provide a more detail to what customers are interested in and will allow you to answer any questions the customer may have.
Everything that I do, I put myself in the consumer’s shoes and look at things from their perspective. This works in all industries, but since I am currently marketing in the tourism industry, I look to see what is upcoming that might be of interest to our audience. For example, last year, I posted an image of the Grayslake Color Aloft Balloon Festival on Facebook and it did well. So this year, I decided to write a blog post about it that featured everything people would want to know about the event. We then shared the blog post on our Social Channels, I could not believe what happened next. I mean, I know I had the content for our audience and knew they were interested, but on Facebook, that blog post had reached 20,000 people organically in 1 day. Web traffic was also up and we received some e-newsletter sign-ups. All in all, it was a win. We provided our community what they were looking for, answered all of their questions in the blog post, and provided them with great content.
Now, this was not something that happened overnight. At the beginning of each month, I create a blog / content calendar to what we will be writing about. We match that up with our e-newsletter, Social Media strategy for the month, SEM, and any traditional marketing that we have going on. I then determine the content / blog topics that will resonate well with all of our advertising mediums. Our content is now working with all of our platforms and providing our audience with the information and topics that they want.
This is not something new, it is something that has been going on for years. Marketers for decades have been providing their audiences with what they want, when they want it and how they went. The social and content game had just added to it. By giving your audience what they want, they will appreciate it, they will come back, they will buy from you and they will tell their friends.
By having all of your marketing working as one, you will be cultivating your audience to keep coming back to you, sending the same messaging out through all channels, and creating great content that is geared to your audience and reminding them why they followed you in the first place.
The next time you are creating your content strategy be sure to think about your audience first and ask yourself, does this resonate with my audience, is this what they need / want, and are all of our marketing efforts talking about the same thing? By answering all of these questions, you will effectively create content that your audience wants, and is sharable and reaches thousands of people organically on Social Media. Remember, it’s about what your audience wants.
