I, for one, am a strong believer that the beautiful thing about content creation is that it’s not exclusive to only established bloggers, journalists and so on. Anyone who can put a couple of sentences together or conceptualise anything that can be jotted down has the ability to create content. Brands also fit into this mould, something most tend to forget in more ways than one.
Yes, content is king, but not just any content. A fantastic piece of content has the ability to tell a great story, educate, entertain as well as deliver the right message to its intended audience. That all sounds lovely and too simplistic though, creating the actual content is one part but getting it seen and gaining traction is another matter altogether.
So you’ve created your fantastic video or write-up but the next challenge is getting it noticed. The main logical step would be to go on social media and try to garner some sort of interest and talkability around it but even if you manage to do that, there are other elements to consider – is your content reaching the right audience and having the desired impact?
From a marketer or brand point of view this becomes trickier, especially when you consider that these days most people don’t really want to talk to brands, they want to talk to people. The flip side of this has resulted in more people consuming most of their content and getting referrals from their friends, family and individuals (usually influential) they follow. Such is the power behind word of mouth that the latter has resulted in an industry of its own, influencer marketing.
I recently wrote an article, which makes mention of the growing relationship and correlation between great content, content creators and brands:
Today, great content is gold and the more visually beautiful and appealing it is, the better and more attractive to whoever is consuming it. For brands, this goes without saying, especially when you consider that not too many people will take what brands say about themselves at face value. And that’s where influential content creators, who consumers now look to when making their purchase decisions, come into the fold. These content creators collaborate with brands to share key messages (from the brands) with the right target audience.
The above couldn’t be truer especially in this instance. Influencer marketing is one of the best ways of spreading any message or any piece of relevant content. Don’t believe me? See here for some great examples of this in action.
According to Kiss Metrics, a Tomoson study states that “marketers rated influencer outreach as the fastest-growing online customer acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing.” It’s no wonder why then that 59% of marketers were said to be planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months.
Working for one of the leading tech companies in the influencer marketing space, Webfluential, I’ve been fortunate to witness great content marketing strategies as well as see fantastic campaigns in action all executed through collaboration between marketers and influencers. The message (content idea) is there, the individuals (content creators) are there and adding to that, the tech (platforms) to back it all up is also available… so is there a reason why your content (with your key message included) shouldn’t be seen? I think we all know the answer to that.
