Why Content Marketing is the Naughty Marketer’s Karma

Content Marketing has been a major player in 2013, if not the major player, and 2014 will see us all refining what content marketing actually is and what it means for us, whilst focusing on polishing our strategies and coming up with some really awesome stuff to share with our customers and community.

We now have a fairly decent understanding of what content marketing means and what a successful strategy entails, and I can honestly say that am really excited for what 2014 is going to bring to the online world.

It has been a journey of discovery that has been both exciting and rewarding, whilst teaching us all a lesson or two in learning, and how our role as students is never over.

What has content marketing been in the past?

Where we’ve come from

Content marketing, in the past, has been about writing a ton of not very overly useful blog posts with the pure intention of gaining traffic to a website. I am so glad that this is in the past.

I remember all too well the days of keywordstuffed, illegible, spun articles, distributed to a plethora of article sites in the hope that Google would rank a website higher than a competitors. Page rank was the main focus on the agenda, and businesses scrambled to build links and distribute content, which unfortunately left out one very important and critical ingredient; the needs of the customer. Thankfully we all moved passed this phase and onto a much nicer and more considerate era of online marketing, mainly thanks to Google’s algorithms and their quest for a user-focused utopia, which very quickly began to take shape.

What is content marketing now?

The use of owned media dominated our content strategies in 2013, and for obvious reasons too. We had control over what we put up, what we took down, what we said and when we said it.

We saw more videos, more infographics, and more images than ever before, and each of those were crafted for the purpose of delivering useful information to our customers, consumers, and those within our community.

Because we began to understand content marketing a little better in 2013, we focused heavily on production and distribution, and we now know that the future of content marketing is customer-focused content that is purposeful and with intent. And by intent I mean, meant to do something to, or for the reader, creating an overall good experience for our customers.

We used content marketing because it worked like a dream

Karma truly entered the marketing world in 2013 and boy did it feel good to do good! So many brands and businesses switched to a morally correct way of marketing, choosing to put the needs of customer first.

And we used content marketing because it worked so well, which is mainly the reason why it has become such a dominant marketing force for businesses to use; it’s a win win for everyone.

Content Strategies helped us define our story

We used 2013 to define our story, and by knowing our story, we shaped our online persona whilst supporting our business’s goals.

We asked ourselves this:

• What do our customers currently think of our brand?
• What are we currently doing?
• What do we want our customers to think?
• If customers buy this product/service, what will their world be like?
• How will we get from A to B?
• What can we improve on?
• Who will provide guidance for our brand as it makes this journey?
• What is our new idea? How will we lead our audience into this unknown with us?
• What might critics say and what can we have ready?
• What challenges might we face?
• What will our brand ultimately achieve?

We focused on understanding who our customers were

Understanding who our audience was shaped our communications. Gaining a clear understanding of who we were talking to gave us incredible insight, and helped us refine our communications so that they became even more effective at helping our audience get the answers they wanted, whilst delivering the messages that we wanted to say.

We understood the importance of good copy, and realised that having great copywriters on board was the difference between gaining just a few customers, or gaining many.

We understand our audience by:

• Immersing ourselves in our customers world by reading relevant blogs, participating in forums etc.
• Seeking advice from others with experience within our industry
• Directly asking our customers using a survey’s, social media, polls etc.
• Listening to our social channels and the social channels of our competitors
• Looking at our competitors and how they were communicating

We asked ourselves this: What problems are our customers facing and how can we solve these?

Customers wanted answers to their problems and they wanted them fast. If we could deliver a solution that was clear, concise and unbiased, we would be the brand that they would go back to when they needed answers next time. They would remember us.

Owned media ruled

Owned media dominated most content strategies, and using owned media effectively helped us build credibility within our industry and helped us to expand our reach.

What will content marketing become?

Converged media will become a hot topic for marketers in 2014 as the lines between bought, owned and earned media begin to blur. Although digital marketing focuses on owned media, as PR is gained via social media and viral videos, Facebook’s organic reach becomes non-existent, and sponsored content becomes increasingly more popular, we will begin to develop Converged Media Content Strategies.

We’ll focus on creating experiences that will inspire our customers, targeting our content with a laser focus and getting deeper into topics and issues, intending to leave our customers with amazing takeaways that will greatly benefit and enhance their lives. Consumers want a substantial amount of meat on the bones of what they’re reading, so we’ll be thinking about how far we can go into the depth of a problem. More white papers will be produced, and these will be in high demand in the early part of the new year, just as we start to get our head around producing more Big Content.

Customers want real, hard hitting, useful information that is going to change the way that they think and help them to do better. Marketing has become about experiences and real-life, based upon actual people and actual results. 2014 will be a pivotal year for marketing, and I can’t wait to see what the major brands will be creating.

So why is it like Karma?

The definition of Karma is: good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one’s actions.

If you do good, you’ll get good back. If you do bad, you’ll get bad back.

If you produce good quality useful content that will help a person and satisfy a need, then you will get in return a fantastic online reputation that reaches far and wide, whilst positioning your brand at the top of its game.

Keep producing content in a selfish manner that does no good expect create noise and take up web space, and you’ll become known as an untrustworthy and unreliable source, and hopefully you’ll get a slap on the wrist from Google for being such a naughty marketer. Tut tut.

Get good Karma

At the core of every content strategy should be the aim to create and deliver useful content that benefits the target audience, because just like Karma, you need to give to receive, which is why using content is such an amazingly effective marketing strategy; it complies with the laws of the universe.

You give, you give, and you give; and then you receive.

My 2014 content prediction:

I am by no means an expert, but I still have my thoughts and surmising’s on what 2014 will bring in terms of content marketing.

I think that media is going to get smart. And by this I mean, just as we see with mobile advertising, content is going to get interactive and clever.

I’m not sure how this will happen, but when I envisage the future of content marketing  I see interaction and personalisation. We already have infographics, ebooks, white papers etc. so I believe that there will be a breakthrough in media creation that will enhance future campaigns and be unlike what we are currently using and seeing all over the web.

I think we’ll see interactive infographics with videos embedded in them and voice notes attached, it’s going to get quite sensual.

This could already be out there, but I have yet to see it, so let me know if you have seen anything like this?

Final note:

Finally the business world is showing responsibility and accountability for what they produce, and the intentions behind each carefully crafted blog post, image, etc. are now becoming 100% genuine.  It’s an exciting time for digital marketing.

What are your 2014 Content marketing predictions?