Julie Fredrickson, co-founder of PlayAPI . She was previously a brand manager for Ann Taylor and Equinox. Follow her on Twitter @almostmedia.
Content marketing is meant to create a narrative about your brand, its identity and how
it feeds the needs and desires of its consumers. And the content that achieves this
strategic goal is often already produced by the brand as a function of its existence.
Product catalogs are shot, instructional videos are produced, slogans are shared and
campaign imagery is carefully orchestrated. Given this existing investment, why are
brands obsessed with the creation and distribution of the lowest-common-denominator social marketing materials?
Brands often don’t realize how much viable content exists in their organizations and
how, with a little ingenuity, it can be repurposed, reformatted, recut or recombined to
incredible effect with minimal budget outlay. Every brand has a content type that it
creates just by existing. I always encourage clients to think about what brand assets
already exist before going down the content-creation road. You don’t always need a
studio dedicated to creating daily content or a service to help you find things to talk
about as a brand, but what you do need is a strong sense of how you want consumers to engage with your brand.
Too often in the rush to real time,, you forget the strategic reasons your brand implemented a digital strategy in the first place.
If you know what interactions you want from your clients, you can make informed
decisions about picking engagement levers or even game mechanics to drive that
outcome using existing assets. Do you want people to have a stronger affinity for your
brand? Do you want to increase awareness? Is engagement and time spent with your
brand the issue? Or do you have a brand understanding issues?
Different interactions and engagement mechanics can drive many types of marketing outcomes for you when strategically combined with your best brand content. Answer that question, and ask yourself how your existing content can be used to achieve those goals before buying into the real-time marketing fad.
Image via Shutterstock
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