According to content marketing guru, Professor Mark Schaefer, ‘only we…’ is the most important sentence every organisation must finish before creating a content marketing strategy.
If you can’t finish it, you are not going to hit the mark when it comes to producing exceptional, rich content.
What are the things you do differently? What are the things that your audience connects with you for? And what are the things your competitors wish they did as well as you?
In todays world there seems to be an understanding that companies should be doing some form of content marketing, but as CM godfather Joe Pulizzi(CMI) told the audience at Content Marketing World in Sydney, only a third of companies he spoke to thought their content marketing was effective. So why is so much content missing the mark?
Without understanding the reason why you are doing it, you can easily fall into the trap of producing things for the sake of it. This may be good content but that is not enough anymore. Anyone can produce ‘good’ content but great content is where you need to be aiming. Before you even begin to start producing great content you need to understand your audience and what you want them to feel.
As Bernadette Jiwa told us, we are ‘feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel’. Empathy is an underrated resource when trying to connect with an audience and a clear strategy can help utilise this emotion in the ways we want it to. If we are not giving our audience exceptional content, you can be sure somebody else will.
So, if you are like one of the 2/3 of companies Joe Pulizzi spoke to that aren’t seeing results from your content, complete this: Only we…
We have, but that’s for another blog!
Ian
image attributed - https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/
