I was talking with a guy who runs a digital marketing agency. We were discussing his proposal to a client to handle a social media campaign for them, to do content marketing.
He committed to writing and sending out 20 articles a month for them, 5 articles a week. I asked him if they had that much good stuff to send out every week. He said, "It doesn't matter. We'll get their name out there even if we have to write about a truck the company buys. They want 20 articles sent out every month, then we'll make things up to write about."
I said to him that was just pushing static out onto an already crowded Internet, and after awhile people aren't going to read the dribble that comes from that company. "The search engines will pick the articles up, their rankings will go up", he said.
Writing for the search engines, not for customers. Who's your audience? Search spiders or living, breathing customers?
Content marketing is definitely a great way to be found through organic search. But people appreciate and are looking for relevant, valuable information.
Back to that mission of '20 articles per month'. I recently suggested to a client (who wanted us to send out 20 articles/month - had they been talking to that other guy??) to reframe it as '20 posts per month'. Posts can be:
- relevant articles (written to help inform customers, not spiders)
- a post on a blog
- an informative video
- a response to a question
- a podcast
Add all the posts up over the course of a month. 20 is then doable. It may be 4-5 really good articles and the rest other content. And then you're out there socializing it up in a variety of ways and in engaging conversations. Include 'next action' steps in your communication and you'll be bringing customer back for more.
The side benefit as you send out quality, next step content is that you'll be creating a reputation as a trusted resource of information, building your brand reputation.
Not just blathering on about a truck.
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