If there’s one thing people can’t stop talking about right now, it’s content marketing. With social media taking off like a jet plane, businesses need a variety of interesting and informative content to talk about on their social media platforms. Now, 73% of businesses are creating twice as much content as they were in 2014 – but not all of this is working that well for them. Why not? Because they don’t know the 4 P’s of content of course! 4 simple little rules that help transform your boring old content into a sparkling beacon, attracting the moths that are potential customers. At Eleven Eight, we believe in great content, so we want to share with you the 4 P’s so that you can start seeing results.
Content marketing can be a very slippery mistress, and the old phrase ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ has never been more applicable than here. You will quickly find that just uploading a load of content will only get you so far. You might get a couple of likes or maybe a tweet about your blog, but soon it will be doing you more harm than good. So make sure your content goes off with a bang, and plan plan plan! As a general rule of thumb, we have a 3 stage planning process that we are happy to share with you today:
- Research – Find out who your audience is, what are they reading, when and why. What form of content do your readers prefer? Would they like some regular blogs, or maybe a nice infographic? Would an e-book be more up their street, or would they prefer a short video?
- Strategy – Work out what you can say, in what order and what types of content you can use to send that message out into the world
- Calendar Planning – Timing is everything, and making sure your content is planned and regular is a huge part of that.
All that planning is great, but it isn’t worth much if that’s all you do! So once you’ve figured out all that nitty gritty stuff, it’s time to get writing! Content production must be timely and the results inspiring, and to get the best results your message should be strong and instantly stand out. Sound like a bit of a tall order? Then we recommend hiring a professional content writer to sort this bit out for you.
Companies like us are geared up to produce stunning content in quick turnarounds, perfect for your busy executive or business owner already spinning many plates and juggling many chainsaws.
Congratulations! You’ve got your gorgeous content ready to go, but what do you do with it? Your content needs a home after all, so the obvious answer is to publish it of course! But publishing it isn’t as straightforward as you might think – oh no!
Throwing it up on your blog is one thing, but if you really want a lot of interaction then it needs to be in many different places. So publish it on Pulse, put it up on a networking site and submit it to some online publications. The more places you publish your content, the more places it can be seen and the more successful it will become.
So now you have your content and it’s sitting on various sites just waiting to be read. Your next step is to tell people about it. This is often the stage where the wheels come off that lovely neon content bus. You have poured so much time into planning and producing this great content, and you’ve published it here there and everywhere, but no one knows it’s there. ‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t work here, so instead you need to start promoting the hell out of your content. Tweet about it frequently, write updates about it, even set up a pay per click campaign to get your content seen! Social media is a fantastic way to get the word out, and it stops you having to tell everyone you meet to read your stuff.