For the past couple of years I have watched SEO, PR, Analytics and Social Media evolve as organisations try to get to grips with how best to align their resources to the current marketing environment. The next evolution of these disciplines in my view is Content Marketing.
Two years ago SEO was done by SEO experts, PR agencies did PR and Social Media was done by the office junior.
Back then quantity was king, be active spew out loads of content and that will show all the online algorithms how important you are.
But now the sheer volume of drab, pointless and regurgitated content has worn us consumers out. My guess is over 90% of content is ignored.
And Google got wise to this problem early, being quick to rank websites on page quality algorithms over activity and volume.
This shift has put the spotlight directly on the content organisations produce because in 2017 it is only high quality content that will deliver any value.
The discipline most able to tackle this is Content Marketing. It is not new by any means, the term has been around for a lot more than two years, but my feeling is that it will become a mainstream role in 2017.
I will be asking our clients;
- Who is going to create content for you? Someone internally, outsourced or a combination of both
- What content are your customer really interested in
- Is there a budget set aside to invest is quality content
- Whose is writing the content, creating the infographics, taking your photos and scrupting your videos?
- Is there a strategy / a plan in place to make sure that this content is created and it then deliver to the right channels
- Who is the responsible for planning and then selecting the channels for this content to be published and what is the trickle down path (website update, email broadcast, Facebook post, etc)
Some of these questions will be traditionally for the PR agencies, but do they know how to tailor the newly written content to fit with the SEO strategy. Good content is vital to Google ranking, but only if it tagged and handled correctly, another SEO job. Next, the content needs to be broadcast across your social platforms, yet another job role. And finally content is not just the written word, its graphics, photos, videos and so much more.
Perhaps the biggest challenge, alongside finding budget, is idea creation, and then seeing it through to production. Only the client knows about their business, so they need to work closely with a creative agency to come up with stand out content. But this needs planning, writing, scripting, investment and discipline.
This blog post offers no solution to this development just observations at this stage.
Going forward Crush Design will be looking in more detail how we can support our clients content creation needs and strategies going forward to give them a competition advantage through content marketing.
So watch this space.
