Every day, marketers are missing out on the opportunity to maximize their content. Instead of tapping into the valuable audio and video content they already have, they’re relying on outdated tactics that haven’t changed since content marketing first became mainstream two decades ago.
Think back to the early 2000s. Blogging quickly took over as the foundation for every brand’s content marketing strategy. Now, look at your content marketing strategy today. Chances are not much has changed. With all of the advancements in marketing technology and new channels to engage your audience, there are much better ways to get the most out of your content.
- Marketers are relying on blogs to fuel marketing strategy
Blogging is still at the heart of most modern content strategies, even though marketers today have another content-rich channel at their fingertips: podcasts. With 850,00 active podcasts and 30 million episodes available worldwide, there’s no denying the growing popularity of podcasts. And, while B2B marketers are already finding value from their show, they could still be doing a lot more with it.
Rather than relying on the blog to fuel their content marketing efforts, marketers can make podcasting the centerpiece of their strategy. Podcast episodes are chock-full of insights from thought leaders, customers, experts, and partners. And let’s be honest, there’s no better source to fuel your content.
Podcast episodes can be broken down into audio, video, and transcribed content. From there, marketers can fuel all of their channels and campaigns, including blogs, eBooks, email newsletters, and sales enablement. Maybe you embed an audiogram into your blog post, use transcriptions to write articles, post a video clip on social media, or pull customer quotes for marketing collateral. This process is known as amplified marketing.
Marketers need amplified marketing now more than ever. In a study of more than 1,000 marketing executives, every single respondent admitted content overload has turned into a top challenge while half report they have more content than they are prepared to manage. With amplified marketing, marketers aren’t tasked with writing mass amounts of content. They can use existing content from experts and customers to fuel their content and ease this burden of delivering high-quality, high-quantity content
- Marketers are writing for search engines, not people
It’s becoming increasingly important for brands to humanize their approach to engaging their audience. As much as 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them, prioritizing relationships over marketing and advertising tactics. This is another reason podcast content is so valuable. Your audience would rather get insight into actual human-to-human conversations with your favorite thought leaders than being targeted with keyword-heavy content based on algorithms and written for SEO.
The problem with today’s blog-centric content marketing strategy is that it fails to serve people over search engines. Too many marketers are only focused on SEO, instead of making it part of the process. Keyword research is great and it can inform content, conversations, and the like because it focuses on what your audience is searching for, but it can’t be the sole basis of a content strategy. Instead, let keyword research help you identify what conversations to have and then amplify the actual voices of real industry experts in an authentic way people crave (through a more thorough multi-media content strategy). Your audience is ready for a more personalized marketing approach that reaches them where they are at and in the format they prefer.
Marketers can fulfill this need by using amplified marketing to spread conversations across all channels to quite literally humanize their voice. To use conversations to their full potential, however, it’s important to first understand how to properly promote your content.
- Marketers are not amplifying content across channels
Content marketing goes well beyond content creation. It also involves fully promoting each and every piece of content you create to attract attention from your target audience.
Otherwise, content could just be building up on one channel, not getting the visibility it deserves.
That said, simply scheduling a social media post about your blog, podcast or video when you publish it isn’t enough to draw your audience in. Most posts only have a lifespan of a few hours, at best.
But when you wring out your content for all it’s worth, you can expect a much greater impact. Podcast episodes, webinars and virtual events are a gold mine for fresh, engaging content, which can fuel other channels to make sure your messages hit home. Why spend months planning for these events only to drum up a quick post and hope your audience searches for the recording after the fact?
Marketers can repurpose their audio and video content to spread it out over a longer period of time. They can turn a webinar into a video podcast or transform their podcast into other types of content, including audiograms and short clips for social and blog posts, presentations, email newsletters and more. All of a sudden, the content you worked so hard on is now living in all of your channels.
After multiple decades of using the same old tactics, it’s time for a new era of content marketing: one that starts with conversations. Marketers can champion this new way to engage with their audience by using amplified marketing to spread valuable audio and video content across all channels and campaigns, enabling them to easily provide their audience with the insights they crave.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Holly Pels, Vice President of Marketing at Casted
Holly Pels is the Vice President of Marketing at Casted – the first content marketing platform for B2B podcasting, making podcasting more engaging, efficient, and effective for brands. Holly is a strategic and tactical marketer who loves podcasts and content creation.