“Content is King” is one notion that we have all heard in our lifetimes over and over again as marketers, but how do you create and distribute content? Yes, distribution is as important as creating content and that is something that many marketers forget to give equal importance to. This piece tries to focus on both aspects of content and gives out recommendations on how you can improve on your content game.
Content Creation
Let’s start things off with content creation. As a brand, you have three main sources of ideas that you can use for creating content which include keyword research, digital trends and building on user generated content by involving communities. These three angles can help you create content that is suitable for your brand, but of course you have to keep your niche in mind before moving forward.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the first source of getting ideas for your content. When trying this out at Blog Coverage (a subsidiary of FDC), I wanted to increase the traffic on my website and entertainment is something which resonated with what I was writing about. So, I turned to Google AdWord’s Keyword Research tool. In this case I was looking at the keywords for “Songs” and wanted to look for relevant keywords within this main category. This is what the searches looked like: “Songs” had 823,000 average searches per month, “Indian Songs” had “368,000” searches while “Pakistani Songs” had 74,000 searches. Out of these the main keyword “Songs” was too generic while “Pakistani Songs” had a lower search volume and thus I decided to go for “Indian Songs” as the category for the blog post. Then to make things more exciting and appealing to the audience based on Buzzfeed’s recommendation of using numbers in your posts and the premise that my blog tries to talk more in favor of the Pakistani audience, I ended up with the title “Top 5 Weirdest Indian Songs Ever”.
Trends
Trends are something which can be another source for creating content for your niche. There are three main sources for finding out what is “in” with the public. Number one: Twitter Trends, hashtags that tell you what people are talking about. Yes, in our market these trends are mostly political but every once in a while you get reasonable and suitable trends as well that you can use for your niche. Another source of trends is Google trends, a place where you can find out what has been trending based on a specific time period. Using the same technique for Blog Coverage, I wanted to write something for people who are interested in tech so I turned to Google Trends and was able to find out that within the past 15 days OPPO’s new F3 Plus Selfie Expert had been in the news so I went towards writing a piece on the topic and was able to get a decent response out of it.
Involve Your Audience
The last source of getting content ideas in the series takes a different route and is a more speculative approach in nature. This tries to involve your audience into taking decisions for you when it comes to content. For e.g. if your brand revolves around food, you can involve the many food groups on Facebook and similarly other communities when it comes to other niches. You can start off with a discussion and end up with some really nice topics and once you actually do create that piece of content, you will have members of these communities support you and share it on your behalf.
Content Distribution
The second piece to the puzzle is about content distribution. There are four probable ways to go about this. These include using your friends and family members, using advertising, influencers or cheap thrills using reward systems. However, here you need to again make sure that you are not deviating from your niche as it could turn out to make things disastrous for you.
Friends and Family Sharing
Let’s talk about the famous notion that almost every marketer hears “Have your people share the content, I’m sure you know a lot of people.” Well I have put this notion to a test with an experiment where I had 10 people on board (friends and family) with an equal mix of males and females, including housewives, working women and people who were considered social. As a result, I was able to conclude that on average each share resulted in 4 people actually visiting my website and viewing the content in detail. So, it is not a bad bargain but requires a lot of leg work. (For more details about this experiment, check out this link: http://fwddigi.com/2017/04/17/digital-experiments-by-fdc-content-sharing-by-friends-and-family/
Advertising
Advertising is another major tool for marketers when it comes to distribution. If you know your audience and you know what you want them to do, also if you have the right budgets in place then advertising is right for you. But you need to understand that “Boosting” a post doesn’t necessarily mean that it will have people interested in what you are talking about. What it means that it will show your ad to people who are more likely to engage with your post and not necessarily click through it. If you want them to view the content that you have on your website then a conversion ad on Facebook, optimized for viewing content would get you better results.
Digital PR and Cheap Thrills
The last two sources are a bit unorthodox but have been used repeatedly throughout history. One of these fall in the domain of Digital PR while the other is more of using cheap thrills like many of the Like, Share and Win contests that you would have seen around you. You can use the latter once in a blue moon to get your rankings up but know that when you do such things, you get a host of fake profiles getting active as well. Digital PR on the other hand is more solid and having other people talk about you is always a good idea when it comes to boosting your credibility.
To sum it all up, there are various sources for content creation and distribution and you need to find your perfect mix if you want to actually make use of the King, i.e. content.
All this sounds too overwhelming? Let us take care of content creation and distribution for your brand. Fill out this little form and we’ll be in touch!
