How Poor Marketing Kills Great Content

I was reading some excellent articles on the web that brought me back to a key issue faced by most marketers today - the marketing of content.

Look at it this way...the majority of companies (yes, including media companies) that have been creating quality content for years never had to worry about marketing their content. They had targeted databases and targeted direct mail lists and knew exactly where their prospects and customers are at all times. Marketing time and resources had always been used for brand advertising, sales initiatives, event marketing, direct marketing, etc., not to market the content. But today, since the average company spends almost a quarter of their marketing spend on content (according to the Custom Publishing Council), how can a company put so many resources behind something and not market it effective? Well, it's happening a lot.  If that's your situation, this is a must read.

MediaWeek's recent feature on "Is Social Media Killing the Campaign Microsite?" brought attention to the fact that the microsite (or content web portal...content microsite) might be going the way of the 30-second spot. The author, Brian Morrissey, states that "the growth of social media is causing marketers to realize they cannot expect consumers to always seek them out."

Social media is just one aspect to this issue. Ever-changing buyer behavior and expectations are another. Regardless of the reasons, custom publishing content cannot be marketed the way it was in the past.

Let's take a look at the traditional custom publishing or content marketing campaign:

1. Create glossy 32+ page magazine.
2. Mail magazine to targeted list of customers and prospects.
3. Upload content to the magazine microsite just before the print copies are delivered.
4. Repeat process in 3 months.

I may be simplifying this just a bit, but this is how 99% of the custom projects are produced. This is so five years ago.

It's Not All About You

I've been keeping up with the postings from the folks at PandemicBlog recently and picked up on this review of an article by Kevin Nalts on best practices for using viral videos.  Kevin, one of THE experts in viral marketing with video, posted in the comments and they struck me as something so simple, but something most content marketers haven't realized yet. Kevin says...

"Would you go to Hersheys.com to watch funny videos? Probably not. Would you watch Hershey-sponsored videos via YouTube? Much better chance. It’s based on when pharmaceutical marketers wanted their brand site to be the “ultimate destination for people who have condition x.” Puleez- just go syndicate or advertise on WebMD."

This is true for not just video, but all your content that can be "webified". Heck, I'm a huge fan of the microsite. The microsite is not dead, it's simply just one way out of many that you need to connect and communicate with your customers.

There are no glass ceilings or content gates or, God forbid, concerns over where your content ends up. Don't be blind that, no matter how you promote your content, that people will just come and engage with your content.

Less Content, More Marketing

This is essentially the key, and there is no better example to this than in blogging.  Successful blogging, to most people,  is about frequency. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Said best by Eric Kintz at the mpdailyfix, blogging is not about "how often" but about how the blogger participates in the community. The same can be said for all of your web-based content. However you or your company are involved in physical communities in your industry, you need to double those efforts on the web.

I've had actual conversations with three industry experts this week about their web content (two marketers, one media professional). Each of them couldn't figure out why they weren't getting more traffic. Outside of the basic SEO fixes, the majority of it came down to poor marketing, not poor content. When I asked, "How are you marketing your content?" it was like I asked them if they were the missing gunman on the grassy knoll. And please, there is more to marketing your website than a little SEO and pay-per-click.

Here's the Point: Before you create any more "great content", figure out how you are going to market it FIRST.

A More Fitting Example

Let's end where we started, with the traditional custom magazine example. For the basic quarterly magazine project, here is one way to look at how to actually get the most "bang for your buck" out of your content, and truly create multiple avenues for qualified prospects and customers to reach you.

1. Record audio and video of interviews for the magazine if possible for later repurposing.
2. Begin news release schedule before the magazine comes out. Target three or four key topics that affect your customers and the industry (based on the magazine content). The release link should take them to the magazine subscription or digital magazine subscription page. Incentive could be to get a free subscription to the print magazine or newsletter.
3. Discuss the magazine on your corporate blog. Get your editor to post some of the key findings/issues.  If you don't have a corporate blog, create one on your magazine microsite.
4. Sent out news releases through a keyword-optimized service such as prweb.
5. Post videos of interviews to YouTube and other targeted video portals specific to your industry. Upload audio to microsite.  Possibly research podcast directories relevant to your industry.
6. Print and mail glossy 32+ page magazine.
7. Sent digital magazine version to the international audience or domestic audience you didn't want to spend printing and postage on.
8. Make sure all articles have their own HTML pages on your microsite. Be sure each article has social media capabilities such as letting people add to Facebook, Digg, or StumbleUpon, to name a few.
9. Be sure to Stumble! each article and choose the proper category for the article. Say, for example, the article goes best in agriculture, those people who have tagged agriculture as a keyword may see your article when they use StumbleUpon.
10. Provide something remarkable and different on your microsite for download. This does two things: 1) continues the conversation with your current customers, or 2) gives you the information on prospects so you can begin a conversation with them. Something remarkable may be a free eBook about the 10 trends in your industry, or free white paper on some new cutting edge technology. Keep the sales pitch out.  Education only at this point.
11. Be sure to make RSS feeds available for your web content. I use FeedBurner.
12. Continue the news release program pushing to the videos, or eBook, or key articles. Remember, news releases aren't for getting press, they are for building key links and for bloggers and influencers to find your site. Industry bloggers are key to your magazine (believe it or not).
13. Upload articles to key vertical portals such as smallbusinessbrief.com for small business, Sphinn for SEO/SEM and Junta42 for content marketing.
14. And if you are really on the cutting edge, create a Facebook page around your magazine or your company and promote within that vehicle. Patrick Shaber provides an example of the possibilities of this, and how a customer of Pragmatic Marketing actually set one up for them. To heck with controlling your own content.

There are more, but this gives you an idea of the marketing that should be happening around your relevant and valuable content. Think of it this way...how much content have you or your organization created that you felt was so valuable but was only seen by one group of people, or possibly not engaged in at all. Marketing problem, not content problem.

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Related Articles:

• Is it Custom Publishing or Social Media?
• Stop Shouting Features: 5 Tips To Create a Knowledge Marketing Program
• Video Shorts - Case Study 2.0

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Comments

[Joe Flores]

great tangible tactics involving the need to know where you want your content marketed, versus creating qualitative content

[cardiogirl]

Hi, Found you through BuzzFuse. I agree with you whole-heartedly. I am trying to do exactly what you are suggesting, but find it a tedious and slow process when trying to market a personal blog (like my own) to readers. I'm just looking for increased readership.

Hence joining BuzzFuse. I think I'm pretty solid on my content, it's just finding and retaining readers. My current method is to search the web for like-minded bloggers, leave comments and network through Entrecard, BlogCatalog and now BuzzFuse. But it seems I must put in 50 hours of work to earn one reader.

I'm looking for a more effective way to market my personal blog. Any suggestions?

[Joe Pulizzi, Junta42]

@ cardio...Thanks for the post, and a very recurring question. Unfortunately, there is no magic pill. You are doing the right thing by becoming active on other blogs. You might be doing this but didn't mention it, but be sure you are active in other blogs where your end customers are.

From a quick observation, your blog looks and reads very nice. It took me a second to figure out just who you were targeting. It probably wouldn't hurt to ultra niche yourself at this point, so the people that are really looking for your kind of content will find you.

Have you tried eBooks, podcasts and other ways to get your audience involved. 30 minute podcasts that equal a workout may be something that could fill a gab - "Filling the Content Void during your workout" or something like that...

Hope that helps. Good luck!