8 Tips to Improve your Digital Marketing Content Strategy

At Alesia, we know that balancing your marketing mix often means combining what is well known with what is less familiar. From traditional print advertising to mobile website optimisation and cutting edge social media marketing strategies – maintaining an optimised balance requires on-going review and refinement.
We all have to make sure that our marketing makes the most of the new opportunities available to us, so today we have decided to talk about one of the main “recent” marketing trends, which we still see so many companies struggle with:  The rise and evolution of digital content, also known as Content Marketing. This is nothing else that the next-gen thought leadership. As renewables communication professionals, this is our new challenge:  creating, managing and distributing content across multiple digital platforms.

Here are 8 tips for you to improve your digital content marketing.

Think like a publisher
To come up with good stories, you need to adopt the mind-set of a publisher (or editor, really). Your company’s intellectual capital needs to be brought to life for the benefit of your audience (and therefore your own benefit). That’s why marketing teams must now learn to act like a publisher in order to earn the attention of their audiences with content that really adds value. We hear it often enough: marketing departments tend to look more and more like newsrooms, so acting like a publisher should become part of your job description.

Unlock your company’s intellectual capital
Your intellectual capital is your knowledge of the market, the knowledge of your products and how they improve your customer’s business, your strategies, your ideas and your superior grasp on the business environment that you and your customers occupy. This is the essence of thought leadership. So how do you start creating content? Step into your audience’s shoes, not as buyers of your products or services, but as buyers of the type ofproducts and services that you also happen to sell. Always remember that it’s not about you, it’s about them. Think about all the potential topics that are of interest to them and on which you hold a position of superior knowledge. Then start sharing.

Creating content requires discipline and method
Creating content is hard work. A good strategy is to put together an editorial calendar to plan content production, and then make the extraction of content from all levels of your organisation a number one priority for your marketing team.  If you struggle with content creation, you may want to consider hiring a former reporter (or even more clever, consider hiring us) that will help you develop content, such as content for blogging, website, social media, webcast, etc.

Giving away knowledge for free:  Good or bad?
We hear that often enough: “Our knowledge is our competitive advantage and we don’t want our competitors to know what we know”. This is nonsense. Don’t be afraid of giving away knowledge for free. In all likelihood, all customers need to access whatever knowledge they require before making the decision to buy from you or from your competitors. They will get the info they need anyway, so you will be miles ahead of the pack if they get it from you.

Give to get
The main factor motivating people to participate in social activity online is to find answers to the business problems that they face. As we said above, the problem solving cycle starts long before the buying cycle. So refrain from doing your sales pitch, content marketing is about adding really value, sharing useful information rather than pushing commercial messages out. This all the more important in the social media arena, where sales pitches never fail to turn users off. Remember that content marketing is about solving your customer’s pain points.

Don’t promote your company, but promote the publication of new content
Promote it everywhere, especially through social media (i.e, a tweet saying “check out our latest article”). Your objective is to enhance customer interaction, so engage actively with your audience by inviting their feedback. If necessary invest in some paid social media marketing to promote your latest white paper.

Don’t waste anything: make use of the platforms available
The content that you have created can be distributed in many ways. There are plenty of platforms available in the digital world, so adopt a multiplatform content distribution strategy and you will get a better ROI from your efforts. The idea is that you want to maximise your outreach. Each channel has its own language, so customise the message to the medium, and develop the same content in various forms. You can then distribute it as tweets, blog entries, white papers etc.

Content marketing is the new advertising
It will help you on many levels, improved customer engagement, improved search marketing, improved brand fidelity, improved sales. Content marketing is the new advertising; but with a higher level of utility. This is why developing original content is a top priority for so many renewable energy businesses. It will boost your brand by bringing it to new places and giving it more reach.