According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute: “the biggest challenge for corporate content producers is to actually come up with engaging content all the time”. Due to the overwhelming abundance of content out there and the imminent catching up by competitors or simply better content producers that your company who is giving the first steps, this race can feel daunting.

A great part of content marketing nowadays is a mix of compelling information, entertainment, reach, openness and a big dose of personal touch nurturing that mix you present to your audience.

No one can create 100% engaging content all the time just like no event is 100% satisfactory to everyone; neither is a get-together or any social endeavour. However, your company can take a strategic approach to connect with your target audience and support business goals. Should you aim for perfection? Yes, of course. Even if you know that along the way you will land some nice triumphs,  some average interactions and the occasional hiccup. It’s about following a strategy & also making adjustments but commiting to repetition of the core pillars (more below).

Assuming your team has got the skills to produce good content the key is that, according to the business function they represent, these individuals are fully aware of the goals and possible benefits for their business wing so that their creative process is fully in line with the direction.

Here are some ways in which your team may have the business goals present in their minds (obviously the team needs to be creative enough to avoid the hard-sell):

Sales

Ask collaborators to produce content in line with the different stages of the buying process. A blog post or video, even pictures can cater for stages such as the consideration stage, comparison stage, closing stage, etc. Think how your possible buyers think and make it easy for them to have questions answered even before they ask them. Have a look at this great article over as Social Media B2B covering more about these stages.

Purer Marketing/ Promotion

Remember about entertainment. Even if storytelling is nowadays a buzzword, it is what the community wants and engages with. Ask your content producers to abandon the hammering announcements and build your messages around stories. I am not asking you to create a sitcom (although if you can, people may like it). It’s down to internalising the story as a vehicle. Let me give you an example before I get too abstract: If you are pushing a new product, change in the company, partnership you can present it to the community in a video/ post that actually walks the viewer through how this novelty came into being. For instance, when we opened our London office we created this video in an effort to escape from the typical written announcement.

Publicity

Is your content likely to be picked and shared by authorities & influencers? For instance, is it written/ formatted in such a way that it is easy to be grabbed by an important journalist or blogger who may want to write about it? You cannot artificially generate this interest by others but you can certainly ask your content team to keep best practices in mind and also an eye on the type of content your target influencers are fond of. Then, simply be consistent. Thanks to Ivan Walsh for inspiring this thought.

Customer Service

Even though we are all in the customer services department, senior customer services people in your company should probably take the lead on content production. These experienced people should aim to cater for the different stages in your particular customer services matrix. This could come down things such as tutorials or explaining after-sales processes better.  Why not bring in storytelling to the equation and showcase how you solve specific problems or a client’s success story with your department?  See how Zendesk go about this concept. Ask your content team to also share how you make things better based on complaints (e.g. based on this backlog we have done this and that and rewarded patient clients with X).

Community Building

Caring about the people who relate to your company has always been a business function. We all know that this has been neglected for years and is now changing back to what it should be, with the help of social media and the consumers’ resonance. Ask your collaborators to listen to what the community wants (literally see what key individuals have “liked” “tweeted” or even criticized). Sense what makes them tick and take a leap to try to meet that need. The more you do it, the better you get. The more you serve them, the more room they will give you to actually present brand new inputs that they were not looking for but they like, because they come from you.

Now go and review your content strategy. Is it supporting your business functions? I know for a fact after writing this post that we have a lot to work on here too. Let’s get down to it and if you feel like, leave a quick comment below, we can all do with your great examples and thoughts

Start by thinking about how you use social media. Are you using it in the exact same way as TV, radio or newspapers, pushing a message? Those with big budgets might get away with a few thousands new fans and followers in a good campaign but, guess what’s going to happen as soon as the eye-candy finishes? Users will switch off and forget about you.

Being in the “attention game” can never (ever) pay off. There is a way though, that if it’s done well, can make your company successful and remarkable. That is by making the decision of being in the “Relationships game“. Oh, did I mention that is far less competition there?
Note: you must also truly care about your customer. If that’s not in your company’s DNA, don’t try to fake. People with notice

I can’t agree more when Gary Vaynerchuck says: “The ROI of a company’s engagement with a customer scales in proportion with the bond of the relationship“.

Why is so difficult for brands and companies to see this?

Because the corporate world has scaled everything so much (employees, production, infrastructure, etc) that forgot about the simple things.
Is it so difficult to see that if you listen to your customers, talk to them, delight them you’ll win their hearts and they won’t disappear after the party (campaign) is finished?
Explanation to the boss: Delighting customers translates into more repeated sales, word of mouth and an increase in customer-lifetime-value. There’s your ROI.

What’s your experience in the “attention” or “relationships” game?

We read a lot of blogs here, not only to learn from others, stay up to date with trends, news and ever-happening changes in the web, but also in an effort to visualise the patterns in other people’s recurrent content and figure out their strategy.
End game: Try to be different. Please retain this first thought.

In the past, winning people’s attention (and you could argue interest) was about getting your message into the information distribution channel and the channel did the rest by bombarding people (simplistic but you get the idea). As you know, one of the biggest challenges & changes we face nowadays is that content consumers are in a constant state of mercenary distraction in which them pulling information is what rules over your pushing. There’s an abundance of content from which they pick the lucky winners (and overwhelm themselves with the update doses).

We are all part of it

You and I are one of those content consumers (hopefully you are also a blogger that can benefit from this post). You taste my content every time you grasp an update or a piece of a post on Facebook, Twitter, our newsletter, LinkedIn, Google and you are making my day right now by reading this. It is also true that at this very moment you can (will?) get distracted and jump to another blog, site, text message or pick up the phone, bam! Connection lost… Please retain this second thought if you are still here.

By reading an interesting article from a Spanish Entrepreneur I learned a lot about the reasons for this constant distraction, but I won’t bore you with those. What matters is that it pushed me to think: What is the secret to being different and getting people’s attention?

Attention or connection?

Yes, you can create compelling content, you can work on your visuals to make layouts more engaging, you can be the first one to bring the latest news for your readership (all the time, can you?), you can make the funniest video ever (sometimes?),  you can reduce your own content consumption (to avoid involuntary copying), you can even reward your audience with prizes just for taking in your content! Please retain this third thought (right, I’m talking about the pronoun in bold).

OK, you should do all those things, maybe all together and even come up with more, but nothing can guarantee that you will get people to engage the way you want or need. The only thing that seems to clearly work in my opinion is repetition. Wait a minute, doesn’t content need to be fresh and unique? Yes, but I’m not talking about content, I’m talking about you the blogger. Simply open to the readership, let them know you, your style, personality and repeat it time and again. The point is that no matter how hard you work, if content will get commoditised the only sensible thing to do is to aim for some sort of connection with you. Content is a vehicle only (it seems to me). Oh, and if you are a corporate blogger, go tell the boss that the company is made of people so that the idea of connecting with a brand is a bit under question. Even in the most objective piece of information you share you can let people know about your sense of humor, irony, seriousness, or whatever emotion you can set free.

Trying to control attention is a lost battle, we probably need to move from attention to connection and see what happens…

As an example I could easily ask you now to go ahead: Google me, Twitter me or LinkedIn me for you to hopefully friend me up, but I would risk you getting distracted (have you?).

Instead I’ll try to connect with you by abruptly showing you that I once had a fringe and hopefully you’ll remember it next time you see my more serious Avatar in one of those content doses you intake daily.

Go ahead, leave a comment below if you are still here!

The following are two recent examples that immediately sparked in my head a cool bunch of social media ideas for business:

Formal Menswear

Two weeks ago, I was looking for a nice suit for my wedding. Since I did not have a strong refference about where to go, I googled a few good spots to visit. First thing I realised is  how bad all the websites in this trade where. It took me a bit but finally got a nice deal. Over there, the manager told me that they had a lot of their suits & tuxes over at a trade event that day…

Here’re three ideas on how to make your formal menswear business different (and better):

1. The LIVE experience:  That day, the shop and the stand over at the trade show where very busy. Get two webcams and broadcast LIVE what’s going on in both places! Anyone coming in the shop will know that your company is “busy” doing business at an important event (They may even go there to see more!). Over at the trade show, then can see that your shop is “real”.
2. Build an offline database: Provide the option for people walking in the shop to leave their details (email, Twitter, Facebook) to stay in touch, share great offers and build your online community almost effortless! With this strategy, you’ll realise that a big percentage of your online community are people that have visited your shop already! That is priceless.
3. How do I look? After trying different suits, do we remember how all of them looked?  The simplest way to go about that is to take a few pictures (anyone has a digital camera these days!) and share them later with the prospect/customer. Even further: with the customer’s authorisation, you could share those pics (LIVE would be more interesting) and ask your community which one looked better. This task, could be easily done immediately with a multimedia mobile, uploading content instantly. Many companies struggle to come up with good content. This would take a bit of time (or almost no time from a mobile) and you would be pumping fresh, engaging content everyday to Twitter and your Facebook page!
   You can also go the pro-way with Nedap machines in your store to share how you look

The barber shop

I recently got a voucher for an old style, hot towel shave. Besides mentioning the obvious: it was fantastic!! I walked out of the shop thinking… “there’re so many simple things that could be done”.

Here’re four ideas on how to make your barber shop different (and better):

1. Build an offline database: Same as the previous example, collect email, Twitter and/or Facebook contacat details. Again, this is one of the easiest ways to strongly develop your community.
2. How do I look? Why not taking  “before” and “after” photos? and sending then by email/twitter/Facebook  with a nice template to your customers? I guarantee you, you’ll get a smile/laugh out of them and very likely, they’ll share it with their friends, colleagues and family. More people than now, will know your barber shop Also, if you take these pics with a multimedia mobile, the effort is almost “zero” and with your customer’s permission, you can share those before/after pics on social networks. I bet you’ll spark some conversations…
3. Making the slow day, a BIG day: In every shop, there’s a slow day during the week. Here’s the idea: Choose a good topic. A very simple, attractive and interesting one… those that you have with customers while you cut their hair!! Then, invite someone that could really add value to that topic and then, record a 30 minute chat with your customer (with permission of course) while cutting the hair. If you want to video-record it, even better!!! (people can get a taste also of what your shop looks like) You will be creating a series of weekly podcasts “…at the barber”.  Not only this approach will make your business unique, it also holds a cool story that could be interesting for great PR!
4. Share the experience: If your barber shop is already different by offering hot towel shaves for instance, how can you share this story so more people come by or folks like me, feel curious and go for a treat?
   Use the email database and your community on Twitter and Facebook to share pics of your shop in action! Again, with customers’ permission, get those before/after pics up there, share the series of weekly podcast and invite your customers to bring a photo or video camera,  in case they want to keep a record of the luxurious treat You will come accross these people…. Have a look

In the following weeks we’ll create a Wiki with social media marketing ideas by business category in which all you can share yours!! Stand by.

In the meantime, what do you think about the above ideas? What would you include?

Best,

Fred

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