People are constantly pummelled with content; many are tuning out, switching on ad blockers or scrolling fast through feeds not bothering to click on that interesting, funny video you spent a day creating, that has nothing to do with them.<\/p>\n
At the same time, they value useful information on issues that matter to them personally. A job hunter, for example, wants to know the average salary for their role in the industry<\/a>. A new parent wants to know if the rash should send them to the nearest emergency room or if it’s part of the course with a newborn. And where do people go to find that sort of information? Online. Through search<\/a> or social media or both.<\/p>\n That means that if you produce the right kind of strategic content<\/a>, directly targeted to your audience and helpful or inspiring for them in some way, you will break through and over time, build a relationship with those audiences that pay brand dividends.<\/p>\n While that sounds 101, the foundations are often absent in content because communicators are under huge pressure to get stuff out; creating content that is not always strategically aligned with organisational goals and audience needs.<\/p>\n Strategic content<\/a> ‘adds up’, articulating a broader narrative that over time and with consistent, high-level content shared on social media builds visibility, influence and trust.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Here’s how to go about it.<\/p>\n While most people have a good sense of what their organisational does, few can articulate its reason for being — the thing people would miss if it suddenly disappeared.<\/p>\n Before you embark on a content strategy, you need to get clear about who you are and what you stand for. A ‘flag in the ground’ guides what you create. Importantly, it also guides what you do not create.<\/p>\n With so much online noise, you need to build an identity that is unambiguous and instantly recognisable.<\/p>\n What do you want to be known for? There are thousands of recruiters in Australia. Be precise. Do you place jobs? Or are you the enemies of average<\/a>. Are you ‘a recruiter’, or a home for the top 1% of creative talent in Australia<\/a>?<\/p>\n When people look for you on Google, what do they find?<\/p>\n Does a search provide a fast, clear understanding of what you do?<\/p>\n Your online identity emerges from all the planned and unplanned content, comments, references and reviews about your brand. And it can and should be directed by you<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can do that by developing a conversational map that identifies the conversations, you want to lead or be part of online.<\/p>\n This provides playing field that keeps content targeted.<\/p>\n For example, if the government puts out a white paper on making Australia creative, do you want to lead a discussion around that, reblogging parts of the paper and sharing it into your communities? Is it a priority? Or is it just something you want to comment on? Should you put out a white paper in response?<\/p>\n You’re unlikely to find the executive director of HR for an ASX 100 on Reddit and a tech start up CEO may not be approving TV ads.<\/p>\n It goes without saying that every content decision should be driven by understanding the needs of the person you are trying to reach.<\/p>\n Data is critical for developing an understanding of audience behaviour, including the data you collect about them, whether instore or through their online purchases or conversations.<\/p>\n There are countless tools like Mention<\/a> that help you reach and build that audience, once identified.<\/p>\n The closer you are to your audience, the less content wastage you create.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Today’s fragmented media environment enables you to build strategic advantage by harnessing the network impacts of owned, earned and social media.<\/p>\n The greatest benefit is that you can build your own media channel with a direct path to customers, stakeholders and employees, rather than depending on any third parties to tell your message.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Although some people believe websites are becoming less important, I believe that having a website is a permanent online home. You can direct people to your website as a trusted source of information about your industry and house content, collect customer details and so on.<\/p>\n Using social media is vital<\/a> but these are outposts in that because they don’t belong to you, you’re subject to their terms and conditions and algorithms, which can (and do) change at any time.<\/p>\n Sharing content on social platforms enables you to leverage enormous online networks and earn mentions in channels that you don’t own directly, like newspapers.<\/p>\n Effective communications results from the consistent repetition of credible messages from credible sources.<\/p>\n One of the best ways to do that is to put energy into creating gold standard content that can be cut up differently and optimised for each channel.<\/p>\n Sometimes communicators worry about where the next content hit will come from. But any event is a content opportunity. For example, if you are at a conference, why not share insights via LinkedIn video? Facebook live the event? Create social media tiles from quotes?<\/p>\n At the same time, don’t be afraid to pull back and spend your energy creating one or two pieces of chunky work that tell your full story as a whole and when broken into small, digestible parts.<\/p>\n Here are some ideas:<\/strong><\/p>\n A piece of ‘macro’ strategic content can generate multiple pieces of ‘micro’ content<\/a>, maximising your reach and creating a supply of evergreen content that can be shared again and again.<\/strong><\/p>\n This post<\/a> was originally published on the Firebrand Ideas Ignition blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you produce the right kind of content, directly targeted to your audience and helpful or inspiring for them in some way, you will break through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[841],"capabilities":[],"class_list":["post-15691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tTo do that you need to:<\/h4>\n
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1. Put a flag in the ground <\/strong><\/h2>\n
2. Identify your spheres of influence <\/strong><\/h2>\n
In the above example that might include:<\/h4>\n
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3. Know your audience intimately <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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4. Leverage of owned, earned and social media <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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5. Create content once, recreate countlessly <\/strong><\/h2>\n
How could you maximise the impact of a hefty, fact-laden research report, for example?<\/h4>\n
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