In these times, it’s more important than ever to form an emotional connection with your audience. This not only helps to drive engagement levels in the short term but also creates a long term brand affinity that will benefit your bottom line. Whether you’re a large, global company or a small start-up, a strong content marketing strategy will position your brand as a leader in the conversation.
One thing to keep in mind is that content marketing doesn’t necessarily mean developing a three-page blog post. Content can come in many forms, and we at Hawkins International recommend listening to your audience and testing multiple formats to decide on which best serves your company goals. A three-minute IGTV can be just as effective, and in some cases, reach a much larger audience than a newsletter.
As you develop your content marketing plans, we recommend keeping the below best practices in mind. Our team is also always here to help brainstorm and ideate content series. We can serve as the directors, producers and editors to help bring your vision to life.
Five Tips for an Effective Content Marketing Strategy:
- Audit your existing asset library. Before spending time and energy on developing new content, review existing photos and videos to see if they are usable in this time. Do you have a series of consecutive photos that can be transformed into a stop motion video? Raw video footage that can be edited and shared on IGTV? Old videos can take on a new life with new text overlays or simple graphic intros and transitions.
- Develop a regular content calendar. While this requires a bit of extra planning, a content calendar will help streamline your social media posting efforts. Tap into topics that are consistently trending every week – #TastyTuesday, #WellnessWednesday, #ThursdayThoughts to strategically plan out content efforts at least a week in advance.
- Take advantage of free resources. Many platforms and tools have opened up complimentary access during this time. Here is a comprehensive roundup of various marketing platforms that are allowing complimentary access during this time.
- Follow notable platforms. During this unprecedented time, brands both large and small are learning from each other and optimizing content plans in real-time. To stay up to date on content trends, follow a variety of accounts. We’ve included some of our favorites below that provide our team with inspiration :
- @Creators – a channel that Instagram developed to help creators learn best practices.
- @InstagramForBusiness – another Instagram-managed channel that provides advice to businesses that use the platform.
- @Forbes – they’ve been producing a lot of interesting Instagram Live content recently.
- @IAmWellAndGood – the wellness publication has latched on to trends very early but does a nice job of tailoring to their audience.
- Monitor content performance on a weekly basis. Now is the time to be especially nimble in content planning in order to pivot strategies as necessary. Review top performing posts – based on overall reach and number of likes and comments (engagement) – to identify new, potential content series and future themes. Make sure that you are also taking into account qualitative data – sometimes a comment might spark your next content idea or give you insight into customer needs. Listening to customers during this time is a key part of reporting.