content strategy

In my previous blog post, I went over some of the key advantages of using podcasts as part of your marketing mix. Now I’d like to share with you 5 tips on how to incorporate podcasts into your marketing strategy.

1) Understand Your Strategy

Before you dive in head first, take a minute to understand how podcasting will fit in with your overall marketing strategy. Podcasts are great when they are used in addition to your company’s already-established brand, but they may not be the best method to get a new company up and running.

2) Differentiate Yourself from the Noise

Let’s face it; there are a lot of podcasts out there. You may be wondering how you are going to stand out. My suggestion to you is to come up with unique and engaging information. Do you have an interesting angle on a certain topic? Do you know any industry thought leaders you could interview? Imagine the types of content that would keep you engaged, and deliver that to your listeners.

3) Provide Great Conversations

It’s all about the content you deliver, but we can’t forget about how you deliver that content. In my experience, using a conversational tone works much better than simply dumping information onto your listeners. Consider having two speakers on your podcast, and try drafting your script as a question-and-answer style. This will make your podcast more accessible to your listeners.

4) Use Your Resources

Podcasts are all about the audio, so when it comes to choosing the right recording equipment, it’s crucial you don’t cut any corners. I suggest investing in a high quality microphone, good audio software, and a headphone. As you can probably imagine, this can get a little pricey. It may be a good idea to evaluate whether you want to invest the money and energy in creating your own content, or outsource it.

5) Promote Your Content

Just because you’ve finished recording doesn’t mean the process is over! The last step in creating a podcast is sharing it with your audience. Promoting your content won’t take you too long, but it will make all the difference. Some great ways to promote your podcast include: encouraging subscriptions, sharing it on your social media channels, and promoting it through email marketing.

Podcasts really have become an invaluable tool for marketers. I encourage you to consider adding podcasts to your marketing mix – it may just be your business’s next big thing.

To find out more about how you can use podcasts in your marketing strategy, contact CreativeWorks Marketing today.

With 76 percent of marketers indicating they will increase their content marketing this year, businesses need to take note and not only create quality content but focus more on tying their content to business results and driving activity around creating content, connecting with audiences, and optimizing the entire process.

With all this attention on content, we can’t forget the importance of a content strategy because without one it often leads to inconsistent content with no core themes or purpose. This is confusing to your target audience and can negatively impact your brand’s credibility.

Additionally, the days of content being generically created and without a strategy like that from inbound marketing companies like HubSpot simply doesn’t cut it any more. Generic content is unlikely to rank organically. Generic content doesn’t get shared. Generic content doesn’t engage people and is therefore unlikely to deliver against your wider marketing objectives.

If you skip the strategy and head straight to delivery you’re in danger of creating content, which could either confuse or alienate your audience, or fail to reach them at all.

As a strategic marketer, I’d like to share with you some essential steps to help you create a content strategy for your business. A content strategy is the high-level vision that guides future content development to deliver against a specific business objective. Make sure your content strategy:

Ensures your content is consistently aligned with your brand message and values
Ensures your content enhances your credibility
Ensures your content helps you stand out from the competition
Ensures your content delivers against your objectives

To develop a content strategy you need to start with clarifying your brand’s values and core strengths as well as reviewing the content you already have to make sure it is delivering on your objectives.

Once you have conducted an internal review, take a look at your customers to understand their wants, needs, and purchasing journey as well as where and when they consume content.

As a final step before developing your content strategy, you’ll need to look at your commercial competitors to better their brand values, unique selling proposition, and how they are communicating them to their customers. It would also be worth looking at your content competitors. These might be different from your commercial competitors, as they could be anyone who creates content about the service or product you offer.

With this research conducted, you need to conduct a GAP Analysis to determine what is and isn’t working and identify the gap where you’ll position your brand.

As content is usually goal-driven, so too is your content strategy. What you create depends on what you want to achieve.

There’s a great book I’d recommend on content marketing by Dan Norris. He outlines the importance of content marketing and is worth a read!

Content Machine: Use Content Marketing to Build a 7-figure Business With Zero Advertising by Dan Norris (2015-08-09)