C.R.E.A.M - Content Rules Everything Around Me

by Chris Reid With the average person spending over 50% of their time on the Internet consuming content, it’s indisputable that content rules everything around us and organizations require an innovative content strategy to Triumph online. However, key elements of an effective strategy are often missed as marketers aim to publish as much content as possible, attempting to increase visibility. If you find yourself in this position you may want to take a content marketing lesson from the legendary hip-hop collective who nearly perfected targeting buyer personas and content distribution. This blog post will highlight crucial elements that should be integrated into your content strategy, featuring our favorite East Coast rappers. Protect Ya Neck – Resonate with Your Target Audience If you have not segmented your customers and defined your target audience, there’s a good chance your content has minimal reach. Upon the birth of their collective, each East Coast rapper in the Wu-Tang Clan branded themself to resonate with different buyer personas – GZA for the college crowd, Raekwon and Ghost for the gangstas, Method Man targeted the single ladies and RZA attracted the rock ‘n’ roll consumers. To help develop a contextual understanding of your consumers you too will need to create buyer personas then, subsequently, publish content to connect with them. Information you’ll need to keep in mind when determining your buyer personas include: – Behavioural information about your customers – What stage of the buying journey your audience is in – What information your customers need to drive them into the next stage of the sales cycle. Bring da Ruckus – Create Conversion Goals In addition to branding yourself as an industry influencer who ain’t nothing to **** with, you’ll also want conversion goals when creating original, high-quality content. Each tweet, blog post, ebook and white paper should serve a purpose, even if the intent is a micro conversion that supports the overall goal (such as a new twitter follower who has now entered the awareness stage of the buyer cycle). Conversion goals should correlate with each stage of the buying cycle. Smaller goals associated with the beginning of the buyer’s journey may be blog post page views, retweets/favorited tweets or comments on articles posted. As your customers move through the conversion funnel your goals will escalate alongside the depth of content you produce – with content such as white papers and product videos generating warmer leads. Get the Money – Maximize Your Reach For the ultimate brand exposure you can rip a page out of Wu-Tang’s handbook– divide your company into five individual ventures, each targeting different personas and conquer your industry through unique, influential, content. If that distribution strategy isn’t feasible, not to worry, you can still create hype for your product or service through leveraging multiple communication channels, similar to the Killa Beez. By content marketing, 77% of marketers say they have increased their site’s traffic and 71% say it has improved their site’s search ranking in organic searches. However, these are not results of a blog post that has been published and then left to collect dust. Keep Watch as to where your target audience can be found online and bring da ruckus accordingly. Include social buttons on your blog and share your unique content on multiple social channels to gain exposure. Incorporate keywords targeting the appropriate buyer personas to boost your Google search ranking and bring Tearz to your competition. Content marketing is too often confused with pushing keywords and links out the door with hopes it will attract the right type of consumers. An effective strategy should begin with identifying your target audience, building buyer personas then shaping your unique content into the informational resources your audience desires. Combined with utilizing online distribution channels effectively, these techniques will turn you into the Ghostface Content Killah marketers strive to be.