Content Marketing

Question: Everyone at Chamber meetings is talking about content marketing. What is it? How important is it? How can I capitalize on it if it is important to my Cape business?

Answer: Content is king and distribution is queen in the game of marketing. A well-produced, authentic brand story is the main focus of a good marketing campaign. However, it’s only a success if it reaches its audience. Effective content distribution is paramount in achieving this goal.

Distribution ensures that content is consumed and appreciated by the right audience by targeting readers who are already viewing articles relevant to the brand’s content.

Currently, 87% of marketers are using social media to distribute content. This approach is now proving somewhat ineffective as it’s becoming much harder to gain attention when competing with, for instance, photos of your customer’s friend’s new puppy.

Fortunately, new distribution platforms are available and can help brands reach audiences showcasing content where it will be seen – and appreciated.

Taboola – provides the “from Around the Web” and “You May Like” recommendations on publications such as USA Today, TMZ, and NY Times. It recently released an API that will allow publishers to integrate Taboola’s recommendations into their mobile apps, giving brands the opportunity to reach smartphone readers as well.

Taboola averages 3 billion daily recommendations to over 300 million monthly visitors. By considering many factors including currently trending stories, reader content consumption history, and past user engagement, Taboola surfaces content that’s most likely to keep a user engaged. This allows for one quality piece of content to be reused and distributed across multiple audiences.

Outbrain – is the content discovery platform behind the articles and videos you see labeled as “from Around the Web.” It works with over 10,000 publishers, including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, US Weekly and Rolling Stone, recommending brand content to millions of engaged readers.

Outbrain prides itself on successfully recommending the right content to the right audience, optimizing engagement to increase circulation and duration of stories. If an article is gaining traction, Outbrain highly recommends it – allowing brands to extend the shelf life of their media coverage. An in-depth analytics dashboard is included which allows users to learn the value of their highest-performing content.

Adblade – is a content-style ad platform presenting content in the form of “News Bullets.” Designed to look more like news blurbs than ads, they deliver three times more clicks than regular display or banner ads. They work with top tier online publishers including Yahoo, Hearst, and Daily News. The Bullets are leveraged on Social media as well.

Adblade uses geo-targeting, interest targeting, and retargeting to place content where it will find the most success. Their analytics include the number of impressions, click-through rates, cost per action, and cost per click. These metrics are refreshed every 15 minutes.

OneSpot – takes text or video content (blogs, videos, infographics, Twitter feeds, press mentions and testimonials) and makes ads out of these content sources. Its unique content sequencing engine essentially moves potential customers through a brand’s sales funnel. For example, it can know if a reader is at the top of a sales funnel, so it delivers him thought leadership pieces. If that reader then moves to the middle of the sales funnel, he will see case studies, webinars, and whitepapers.

This is an extremely interactive, results-driven platform, which not only optimizes content engagement but maximizes content’s ability to garner sales leads as well.

Sourced from: IF CONTENT IS KING, THEN DISTRIBUTION IS QUEEN by John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co. via LinkedIn

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