At The Digital Picnic, we *literally* live and breathe content marketing. Seriously though, a good content marketing strategy gets us all jumping up from our desks and happy dancing like the digi nerds that we are.
Want to know why we love content marketing so damn much? Y’see, quality content has the ability to make or break your brand in the digital landscape. With great content you can build meaningful relationships with your customers, accelerate brand awareness, create leads for your business and ultimately? It will help drive up those all-important sales numbers.
So what does *great* content even look like? Let’s dive right in:
Develop content pillars
The social media landscape has become super competitive and in a digital world where every brand and business is fighting for attention, you really need to stand out online.
Posting content for content’s sake isn’t going to be relatable, memorable or engaging for your audience. You really need to understand the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ behind every post in your content plan.
One piece of content might be highly engaging to one segment of your audience, but for another? Well they might just scroll on past your post. So, how do you engage all of the different wants and needs of your audience? Well, you map out a diverse mix of content pillars that will appeal to the different interests of your followers with each and every post. Think video content, branded memes, inspirational posts, step by step guides, BTS and interactive content like polls, just to name a few.
Pssst… want to have a look at a *really* good mix of content that’s got all of the above and more? *Spoiler alert* it’s us!
Check out our content marketing magic here
Invest in good photography
Posts with an image attached, almost-always outperform those with text alone, so investing in high quality imagery is an absolute *must* for every business.
An eye-catching visual will always stop someone in their scroll and will take your content marketing to the next level, so teaming up with a local photographer will really help with your digital storytelling on social media [and give you an amazing content library to pull from!].
Plan in a photoshoot every 3 months [or whatever timing is necessary for your business] and map out a shotlist that aligns to your different content pillars and customer pain points.
Remember, your business needs to be relatable, so those corporate headshots have no place on the ‘gram! Work with a photographer that aligns with your content vision and will capture your business personality in an engaging, candid and relatable way.
Video is king
Facebook’s biggest competitors are YouTube, Netflix, TikTok and Snapchat.
Can you guess what all of those social media leaders have in common? Yep, they’re all video centric and Facebook has proven time and time again that if you can’t beat them, join them.
Enter the rise of Instagram Stories [a complete mimic of Snapchat’s disappearing functionality], IGTV and Facebook Watch [Facebook’s long-form video platforms inspired by YouTube]. We’ve even heard whispers of Facebook developing a new video feature based on the success of TikTok, so it’s safe to say that video really is the future of content marketing.
Video views are counted as an engagement in the all-important algorithm, so introducing a bit of video magic into your weekly content schedule is a surefire way to capture the attention of your audience and boost up your reach organically.
You don’t need to be a professional videographer to create impactful video content. Sometimes the best performing video content is the real simple stuff. Think boomerangs, time-lapses, slow-mo effects and face to camera videos to really humanise your brand.
Tell a story
One of the best things that great content does is provoke an emotion with your audience. Whether that’s making them #lol, feel empathy, relatability, or even sadness [yep, content can make you Kim Kardashian ugly cry when it’s done right]. With every product-based or service-based business you have the opportunity to create emotive content that really speaks to your audience and humanises your business at the same time. Relatable content = Memorable content.
Think about including some posts in your schedule that introduce some thought leadership. Why did you start your business? What are some of the challenges you’ve experienced? And on the flip side, what have been some of your biggest wins? Invite your audience behind the scenes and introduce yourself and your team to help build that all-important, brand affinity,
The best part? When your content provokes an emotion, you will naturally start to see an increase in engagement and reach as a result.
Consistency is key
Before you start going all Oprah with your content marketing [ahem.. you get a post, you get a post, you get a post], it’s really important to map out your brand identity.
With so many different touch-points, your brand look and feel should be instantly recognisable across every piece of content on every different channel.
Canva is a great platform for building branded graphics for your memes and testimonials, make sure you also pop your logo on these so people start to instantly recognise your business. Psst… you can also create some pretty epic Instagram Stories templates on the platform!
A tone of voice document is also a great way to make sure that everyone who works on the business account knows exactly the right kind of language to use. Cohesive messaging is really important on social media, so make sure you map out your brand tone in a document that’s accessible to all team members.
And finally? Use quality imagery that effectively connects to your brand. Re-grams and inspirational imagery is great and all, but make sure the majority of your imagery is your own and start building a visual identity that’s uniquely you.