Content That Generates Returns
As discussed in part one, businesses in Bend and indeed nationwide can make the mistake of overcomplicating things within content marketing. Such tendencies can actually diminish the comprehension of how to solve real world problems—or create tremendous inefficiencies within an organization. By contrast, when there is an elegant simplicity in the way businesses approach this critical aspect for business success, there can be a brilliant functionality and improved results in page rankings and actual cash flow. With this in mind, here a few more foundational principles of content marketing for you to consider in your web efforts.
A big key to efficiency with content marketing is to repeatedly and thoroughly utilize a big idea that has been distilled down into an elegant essence. Too many organizations attempt to “reinvent the wheel,” when the wiser approach would be to make the maximum usage possible from pre-existing hard work and money invested in content. This can be termed the “multiplier effect” or “atomization.” The general idea is to create multiple miniature variations on a central theme, each of which can effectively cover sub-niches of your content marketing needs.
Of increasing importance within content marketing is that, since there is such a huge and growing amount of content out there, you have to advertise and promote yours to make it stand out. If this is not done effectively, don’t expect viewers to somehow stumble upon your content just because it is of high quality. The common belief is that as long as content is interesting, viewers will come across it on the web and you will get the traffic flow you need. But with the sheer number of websites out there, the production of new content needs to be treated like the launch of a new product. This means a coherent promotional approach that ensures that your new content has a high chance of getting noticed in a crowded field.
With content, always keep in mind that the production costs in terms of time and opportunity can be quite significant. If you are in a larger organization, the bean counters will eventually be asking some pointed questions regarding specific proof of resultant cash flow back to the organization. Therefore it is best from the outset to have quantifiable measurements of efficiency built into the whole content marketing process. These in turn can help increase the optimization of content through constant data feedback and resultant course corrections over time. It is not always possible to precisely correlate content with specific cash flows. But intelligent design of surveys on a product, for example, can narrow down more precisely where a boost in cash flow may be connected to specific marketing content.
We have covered several key foundational principles of content marketing that, if consistently applied, will help you to maintain an elegant and efficient approach to your Web efforts in Bend. When the temptation comes to overcomplicate things in this critical endeavor, remember these tried and true principles and stay on your course towards improved cash flow and superior page rankings!
Kelly Walker is creative director for Intrepid Marketing, a Bend ad agency. For more information, contact Kelly at: 541-419-9976 or Kelly@intrepidforward.com
