ep·ic [ep-ik] 3. heroic; majestic; impressively great: Ooh, I do love a good meme. So when my mom told my girlfriend to enjoy an “epic” birthday, that, I thought to myself, is a great word. And I love acronyms too. So in the spirit of sharing my thoughts and experience here are four ways to help make your content marketing E-P-I-C.
E is for Engaging
If you can’t engage users in your content, don’t bother. Why is engaging your audience so important? Because at the heart of content marketing is the social signal. And the social signal is important because it is a key measure in the latest iterations of Google’s search algorithm. That is, all else being equal, content with higher social engagement (such as comments, shares and likes) will rank higher in search results. So first and foremost, your content must engage the audience. If not, you are certainly wasting your time. You’re also wasting the time of any content user who is kind enough to spend time looking at your material.
By engaging, you must give your fans the opportunity to interact. What is the point of social media if you are not engaging your audience in a two-way conversation? That means allowing comments on your blog, and social channels (including YouTube!). If you don’t allow comments, ask yourself what you’re afraid of? If trolls flame your social page, nine times out of ten, they’ll get a smack down from page fans. And remember, the bottom line is that you have control. Worse comes to worse, you can delete a negative comment. (I usually wouldn’t advise that, since a negative comment may actually alert you to a problem with a product or service. But you have no obligation to tolerate mindless bashing.)
Interactivity also means that you allow users to share your content. Social channels make this easy, but you can move things along by asking users to share. Also don’t forget to include a share button on your website! Designers think it’s enough to add social icons, but it’s easier for a user to bookmark or share a page if you provide one-click functionality right there on the page.
P is for Professional
Whether the goal of your content marketing is to generate leads or simply raise brand awareness, your content will always reflect your organization. So content must always reflect the professionalism of your team.
Professional doesn’t mean that your blog, video or photos need to be slick and aloof. At the least, though, content should meet a minimum standard. It’s easy to figure out where to set that standard. Look at competitor’s content. Can you do better? If so, that’s your minimum standard. In practice, that means, for example, that your website meets design best practices including accessibility and coding standards.
Also a minimum standard means that text content is aligned with your audience, which usually means being grammatically correct and free of spelling errors and typos. Likewise, photos should be well-composed, appropriately sized for the medium, and given context with a caption.
Professional content also means that it is relevant to the audience. My dad told me that when he was in the Royal Navy, three topics were banned in the officers’ mess during meals: sex, religion and politics. So unless your brand is centered on those, it’s best to usually avoid them. Some things just don’t need to be shared. Even LOLcats are great fun, but are they relevant to the conversation you want to have with your audience? Talking of fun, professionalism doesn’t meant that content can’t be fun or funny. But humor and levity are spices best used judiciously in your content marketing dishes.
I is for Innovative
So much content. So few eyeballs. Well, there are a lot of eyeballs. But there is also a lot of competition. To rise above the noise, you must be creative! Innovation in content is probably the most challenging aspect of content marketing. But there are a few ways to help the creative juices flow. First, don’t be a one or two pony show. Facebook and Twitter are fine, but there’s a world of awesome channels that will stretch your imagination and inspire new ways of delivering your message.
Pinterest will force you to think about new ways to depict your content visually, whereas Tumblr offers a way to blog via video, images and podcasts as well as writing. Microvideo such as Vine and Video on Instagram, and mobile chat apps such as Kik, impose limits that encourage totally new ways to present content. Marketers are struggling with ways to leverage the appeal of ephemeral content channels such as Snapchat, but there may be untold opportunities for those that crack those particular nuts.
If you’re stuck for new ways to present your stuff, brainstorm! If you’re a team of one, remember that you can tap into your audience for ideas and inspiration. Another approach is to Google “next big thing” (and set up an alert) to make sure you don’t miss the latest developments in technology or media that will help you deliver your message in new ways.
But it’s not just about technology. Remember the Blend-Tec guy who sacrificed an iPhone in his high end blender? (This was in the days that the iPhone was the must-have device.) That video went viral, not because YouTube was new, but because he found a shocking (but SFW) way to deliver the message about his product.
C is for Consistency
I worked with a client whose Facebook page had a feature: Photo of the Week. Yet, when I analyzed the timing of the posts, there was practically no instances where a photo had been posted two weeks in a row. The posts seemed random. The client thought that Photo of the Week was a good idea, but did not understand that it would mean to most users that a photo would be posted, well, once a week.
Inconsistency can reflect poorly on your product or brand. Why? When you are delivering social content you set up expectations - expectations of timing and quality. If those expectations are not met, fans will at best shrug and go on to the next meme de jour. Worse, they could troll your page, leaving you spending time on damage control rather than generating leads and inspiring loyalty.
Consistency, then, means meeting your fans’ expectations and keeping promises. It means providing quality content that is engaging, that to a minimum professional standard, and that is inventive and imaginative. It really means providing EPIC content.
I hope these suggestions will bring some epicness to your content marketing strategy. As always, I can’t include every hint and tip, so if you have any thoughts, I’d love for you to share them in the comments or just drop me a line.