How to Attract People Online? By Embracing 'Community Content'
When it comes to content strategy don't fall into the trap of churning out the same old standard blog that is written from one person's perspective in the company. When you do this it ends up sounding very 'samey', very quickly. At best it keeps up a pretense, at worst it turns people away!
In either case, your content is drowning in a sea of mediocrity. You need to shift gears, change perspectives, walk in the shoes of others, then deliver insights that truly move the needle of engagement for them.
Across the web, there are some fabulous strategies for creating top online content. The type of content that people connect with and feel compelled to share. The key to their success is, embracing community and being multi-dimensional. Rarely does their content come from a single source or viewpoint? They inspire collaboration around every aspect of their business, their staff, and their customers.
Here are 4 really simple content marketing strategies that not only provide a consistent stream of cost-effective content but also embrace dynamic audiences as technology evolves around them. Write For Us Content Marketing Guest Post is a fantastic method to share your knowledge and experience with others.
1. Build an Internal Content Creation Community
Build a content creation schedule that asks for the input of various sources within your business, partner network or customer pool.
Encourage staff from different departments to share insights, share empowering customer stories and showcase partner testimonials.
Give your content community appeal. Empower others to contribute and inspire too, it shouldn't be a chore to write a blog.
If you blog from multiple perspectives you give your content a community presence. It alleviates the issue of trying to reinvent the wheel whilst avoiding the issue of being too pushy on the subjects of marketing and sales.
Internal community content empowers not only corporate but also employee branding and customer profiling too. Insights that matter to them make all the difference to the success of your overall online visibility because their opinions matter most.
2. Build an External Content Creation Community
Content doesn't always need to be an internal production process. You can also contribute on external forums, groups, posts and Q&A sessions.
Online audiences are just as likely to engage with your brand outside of your website. Target the right people by exchanging ideas, opinions and comments in other channels.
External community content is a ready made source of interaction across deeply connected social media channels, industry specific communities, journals and forums.
Relying purely on internal content runs the risk of it not being seen or heard because others may have a better strategy, more engaging internal content and a knack for cranking it out with ease. Here an external community focus on content has some major benefits. You will be rubbing shoulders in already highly visible channels where your thoughts and ideas are far more likely to be seen and acted upon. External content marketing of this kind, is thought leadership driven, within a community of like-minded individuals.
Be aware however, it is crucial that you say the right thing, at the right time and within the right group, because the spotlight is much more focused, simply because more people are likely to see it than anything you say in-house. That said the community confidence you can garner around your brand is immeasurable.
3. Build Original and Curated Content
Mix your own original ideas with curated content of others both on your site and externally across other web properties that are the epitomy of online engagement.
Creating informative and subjective content by mixing the two helps prevent everything from sounding like it is always about you and your business.
Your own content alongside industry balanced curation provides brand awareness and thought leadership without it all sounding commercialised or regurgitated.
By combing these two styles of content creation you can mix and match the best of what you have to offer with what others have to say. This engages readers in and around your subject matter without the heavy lift of needing to constantly think up new ideas, then plough resources into the ideation, creation and publication process.
Instead of your insights wearing thin, you can build trust in your content and curation streams by showing diversity to online audiences without consistently talking about your products and services ad verbatim. It is the best way to ramp up content marketing endeavors without heavy investment.
4. Build Multi-Dimensional Content
Text and imagery serve many effective content marketing campaigns, but they miss a huge opportunity to stimulate multiple senses of online audiences.
Repurpose content into videos, webinars, podcasts or one of the many other formats of engagement that help to turn heads and connect people with your brand.
Multi-dimensional content stimulates multiple senses. It breaks down barriers and breaks away from the norm, providing new perspective that people can feed off, as tech and industry trends change.
Effective online engagement needs content that inspires and that is increasingly tough to achieve with simple text and image based content. It needs combinations of multi-dimensional content that makes your business stand out by delivering a unique call to action. The right format, connection and media channel can bring the most bland content to life.
Integrate multimedia content that is relevant to your industry, branding and above all, your customers needs. It must be eye catching, dynamic and relevant to the primary audience. Multi-dimensional content makes it even more important to publish your content at the right time, in the right context and in the right channel.