The 6 C’s of Content Marketing
While social media trends come and go, one thing is here to stay — content marketing.
To quote marketer Pam Moore “Content is serious business.”
Follow these 6 C’s to get serious about your content marketing this year.
1. Clarity
Without clarity of purpose, it’s difficult to make an impact with your content.
For content clarity and purpose, you need to create a strategy — a roadmap that not only tells you what you’re going to create but how you’re going to create it, when you’re going to publish it and how you’re going to promote it.
Without a strategy, you risk churning out posts on random topics at random times with no clear purpose in mind.
Pro-Fix: Read How To Create Your 2019 Content Marketing Plan to learn how to create yours.
2. Congruence
For content marketing to work, it must be high-quality and relevant to your target audience.
As you think about creating content, focus your strategy around your audience’s needs and interests. What kind of information are they looking for? What problems can you solve for them?
The key here is to really know your audience and their pain-points. Start speaking their language when it comes to the problem you’re solving for them. Write content that specifically answers their particular needs and the types of solutions they’re looking for.
Pro-Fix: Creating audience personas is a crucial part of designing your content strategy and truly understanding who you’re trying to reach. Download my audience persona template here.
3. Compelling
Compelling content is content that makes readers eager to read and share.
Creating an emotional response in your reader, whether that’s surprise, delight, or curiosity is the key to creating compelling content.
Other elements of compelling content include stories, videos, graphics, and images.
4. Currency
Staying current is about creating content that aligns with current trends and topics.
Currency works because people are most interested in “what’s happening now.”
Ellen DeGeneres’s 2014 Oscar selfie, retweeted by more than 2.9 million Twitter users fits the scenario of leveraging a cultural trend — the word selfie was crowned Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year in 2013.
While the Oscar selfie took us by surprise, there are other trends which are more predictable, for example, major sporting events like the Super Bowl in the US, or the World Cup.
The following tools will help you to create current content
- Google Trends — filter your search by country, topic, category, specific topic, content type, and more;
- Buzzfeed — its trending section is perfect for searching for hot topics;
- Buzzsumo — search for the most shared web content on a specific topic;
- Reddit — aggregates trending content from all over the internet and shows the hottest (most upvoted) topics on the main page.
5. Consistency
Creating content on a consistent basis is hard. The solution to this challenge is to create a content calendar at the start of each quarter.
A content calendar helps you maintain a consistent content production schedule, enabling you to plan for seasonal content and annual campaigns. It also helps you deliver a more balanced mix of content formats, such as articles, videos, and social posts.
Pro-Fix: Create a calendar to map out content ideas aligned with 2019 holidays and seasonal trends and events. Use holidays as hooks for content and promotions. Often, this content is evergreen so that you can use it year after year.
6. Commitment
The final C is all about commitment.
Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to see results. It requires consistency and dedication over the long-haul.
Commit to staying the course. Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies available today. Applying the key lessons in this post will help you make your content marketing more relevant, valuable and shareable.
