A Breakdown of What Content Marketing Actually Is
It’s all about content marketing these days apparently. If you don’t have engaging content online you might as well just pack up and go home. At least that’s what we’re told. But what is great content and how do you create it? Below we’ll breakdown what content marketing actually is and exactly how it works.
What Makes Content and Viral Video Marketing So Great
Great content marketing can take a variety of forms but essentially, it’s a piece of media that you have created with the purpose of promoting your brand. However, it shouldn’t appear overly commercial, simply posting your latest advert/promo won’t really cut it. Content marketing works because it’s a little more subtle than a traditional brash advert and more importantly it’s actively customer driven and distributed.
For this to happen the viewer needs to want to take a partial ownership of the actual content you’ve created, and by then sharing the content the viewer is making a public statement about themselves. For example, a viewer will share funny content to make a statement that they themselves, have a fun nature and a sense of humour. Or the viewer may share informative content to make a statement that they themselves are well informed and knowledgeable.
So great content can be a wonderfully entertaining and informative Blog, an instagram page featuring beautiful or dramatic photos or even an engaging and funny Twitter feed. But what it must ultimately be, is something that your customers relate to and essentially want to be seen relating to.
How To Produce The Content
The most obvious form of content marketing (and the one which we’re best placed to discuss) is video. Let’s face it, we all love watching great online video content, and as previously mentioned, we don’t just love watching it, we love sharing it, tweeting it, posting it, and commenting on it.
We like saying, “check this out, this is what I’m all about!”
Viral Video Marketing
The drink manufacturer Red Bull is a great example of a company who understand the way viral video marketing works. Their online content features videos of extreme stunts and sports and these are perfect fodder for their target Social media savvy customers to want to share. They simple put the films out there and watch millions of young people worldwide act as brand evangelists and distributors by posting links to these films on their social network. The fact that you rarely see even a glimpse of the actual drink they make in these films only strengthens their actual brand power.
It was not too many years ago that this type of marketing action and re-action would have been an unspoken dream.
Imagine launching an advertising campaign for your company in the early 90’s (ie pre-digital). Let’s say for argument sake that the campaign’s main footprint was in the form of printed adverts in the popular press and magazines. Now lets also imagine that the people (your customers) who saw the printed adverts loved them so much that they instantly made copies of them. Then they went around putting these copies in highly visible places for their peers to see. Then they spent their social time discussing the posters with friends and debating what they liked and disliked about them. The peers who saw the posters also make copies and posted these copies elsewhere, and they also spend time discussing them with their other friends. Quickly the campaign is everywhere, spread freely by the very people who you covert as your customers! It’s perfect.
It’s not hard to see how brands can subtly spread their message in both powerfully and cost effectively ways.
This is the power of great content marketing.
