Why Content Marketing is the Naughty Marketer’s Karma

Content Marketing has been a major player in 2013, if not the major player, and 2014 will see us all refining what content marketing actually is and what it means for us, whilst focusing on polishing our strategies and coming up with some really awesome stuff to share with our customers and community.

We now have a fairly decent understanding of what content marketing means and what a successful strategy entails, and I can honestly say that am really excited for what 2014 is going to bring to the online world.

It has been a journey of discovery that has been both exciting and rewarding, whilst teaching us all a lesson or two in learning, and how our role as students is never over.

What has content marketing been in the past?

Where we’ve come from

Content marketing, in the past, has been about writing a ton of not very overly useful blog posts with the pure intention of gaining traffic to a website. I am so glad that this is in the past.

I remember all too well the days of keywordstuffed, illegible, spun articles, distributed to a plethora of article sites in the hope that Google would rank a website higher than a competitors. Page rank was the main focus on the agenda, and businesses scrambled to build links and distribute content, which unfortunately left out one very important and critical ingredient; the needs of the customer. Thankfully we all moved passed this phase and onto a much nicer and more considerate era of online marketing, mainly thanks to Google’s algorithms and their quest for a user-focused utopia, which very quickly began to take shape.

What is content marketing now?

The use of owned media dominated our content strategies in 2013, and for obvious reasons too. We had control over what we put up, what we took down, what we said and when we said it.

We saw more videos, more infographics, and more images than ever before, and each of those were crafted for the purpose of delivering useful information to our customers, consumers, and those within our community.

Because we began to understand content marketing a little better in 2013, we focused heavily on production and distribution, and we now know that the future of content marketing is customer-focused content that is purposeful and with intent. And by intent I mean, meant to do something to, or for the reader, creating an overall good experience for our customers.

We used content marketing because it worked like a dream

Karma truly entered the marketing world in 2013 and boy did it feel good to do good! So many brands and businesses switched to a morally correct way of marketing, choosing to put the needs of customer first.

And we used content marketing because it worked so well, which is mainly the reason why it has become such a dominant marketing force for businesses to use; it’s a win win for everyone.

Content Strategies helped us define our story

We used 2013 to define our story, and by knowing our story, we shaped our online persona whilst supporting our business’s goals.

We asked ourselves this:

• What do our customers currently think of our brand?
• What are we currently doing?
• What do we want our customers to think?
• If customers buy this product/service, what will their world be like?
• How will we get from A to B?
• What can we improve on?
• Who will provide guidance for our brand as it makes this journey?
• What is our new idea? How will we lead our audience into this unknown with us?
• What might critics say and what can we have ready?
• What challenges might we face?
• What will our brand ultimately achieve?

We focused on understanding who our customers were

Understanding who our audience was shaped our communications. Gaining a clear understanding of who we were talking to gave us incredible insight, and helped us refine our communications so that they became even more effective at helping our audience get the answers they wanted, whilst delivering the messages that we wanted to say.

We understood the importance of good copy, and realised that having great copywriters on board was the difference between gaining just a few customers, or gaining many.

We understand our audience by:

• Immersing ourselves in our customers world by reading relevant blogs, participating in forums etc.
• Seeking advice from others with experience within our industry
• Directly asking our customers using a survey’s, social media, polls etc.
• Listening to our social channels and the social channels of our competitors
• Looking at our competitors and how they were communicating

We asked ourselves this: What problems are our customers facing and how can we solve these?

Customers wanted answers to their problems and they wanted them fast. If we could deliver a solution that was clear, concise and unbiased, we would be the brand that they would go back to when they needed answers next time. They would remember us.

Owned media ruled

Owned media dominated most content strategies, and using owned media effectively helped us build credibility within our industry and helped us to expand our reach.

What will content marketing become?

Converged media will become a hot topic for marketers in 2014 as the lines between bought, owned and earned media begin to blur. Although digital marketing focuses on owned media, as PR is gained via social media and viral videos, Facebook’s organic reach becomes non-existent, and sponsored content becomes increasingly more popular, we will begin to develop Converged Media Content Strategies.

We’ll focus on creating experiences that will inspire our customers, targeting our content with a laser focus and getting deeper into topics and issues, intending to leave our customers with amazing takeaways that will greatly benefit and enhance their lives. Consumers want a substantial amount of meat on the bones of what they’re reading, so we’ll be thinking about how far we can go into the depth of a problem. More white papers will be produced, and these will be in high demand in the early part of the new year, just as we start to get our head around producing more Big Content.

Customers want real, hard hitting, useful information that is going to change the way that they think and help them to do better. Marketing has become about experiences and real-life, based upon actual people and actual results. 2014 will be a pivotal year for marketing, and I can’t wait to see what the major brands will be creating.

So why is it like Karma?

The definition of Karma is: good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one’s actions.

If you do good, you’ll get good back. If you do bad, you’ll get bad back.

If you produce good quality useful content that will help a person and satisfy a need, then you will get in return a fantastic online reputation that reaches far and wide, whilst positioning your brand at the top of its game.

Keep producing content in a selfish manner that does no good expect create noise and take up web space, and you’ll become known as an untrustworthy and unreliable source, and hopefully you’ll get a slap on the wrist from Google for being such a naughty marketer. Tut tut.

Get good Karma

At the core of every content strategy should be the aim to create and deliver useful content that benefits the target audience, because just like Karma, you need to give to receive, which is why using content is such an amazingly effective marketing strategy; it complies with the laws of the universe.

You give, you give, and you give; and then you receive.

My 2014 content prediction:

I am by no means an expert, but I still have my thoughts and surmising’s on what 2014 will bring in terms of content marketing.

I think that media is going to get smart. And by this I mean, just as we see with mobile advertising, content is going to get interactive and clever.

I’m not sure how this will happen, but when I envisage the future of content marketing  I see interaction and personalisation. We already have infographics, ebooks, white papers etc. so I believe that there will be a breakthrough in media creation that will enhance future campaigns and be unlike what we are currently using and seeing all over the web.

I think we’ll see interactive infographics with videos embedded in them and voice notes attached, it’s going to get quite sensual.

This could already be out there, but I have yet to see it, so let me know if you have seen anything like this?

Final note:

Finally the business world is showing responsibility and accountability for what they produce, and the intentions behind each carefully crafted blog post, image, etc. are now becoming 100% genuine.  It’s an exciting time for digital marketing.

What are your 2014 Content marketing predictions? 

Using Pinterest for Business

“Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organising the things that inspire you.” You’ll see from the image-based site that eye-catching, highly visual pictures are what makes it so addictive for its users, and ultimately why using the platform for business is an absolute no brainer.

Pinterest is unique compared to other social media sites in the sense that it reduces the number of steps from discovery to conversion. What other social media site appeals to our visual nature quite so eloquently as Pinterest and convert visitors into leads faster and with less effort; sound like a platform that you want to be a part of?

Who should use Pinterest?

Pinterest users aren’t discussing the events of their week or how their day has gone, they’re actively building collections of images they find interesting and want to share. Users are displaying their buying aspirations for everyone to see, including marketers, which makes it easier for us to influence customers purchasing decisions.

What do I put on Pinterest?

Create a board and organise your pins by topic. Boards can range from projects that you’re working on, to images of the things that inspire you. Pin images or videos from a website, or upload your own images straight to Pinterest. All images link back to the source, so it’s a great source of traffic. Keeping a balance is key, so remember that the same rules apply here as with other social media platforms; don’t keep posting about yourself. Share, comment and communicate; be social.

How frequently should I post?

Fairly frequently. Remember that the people who follow you will see your pins in their feed, so refrain from posting too much at once as you’ll clog up their feed with all of your images.

Don’t do this...

• Don’t download photos from the web and then upload them as your own pins. You’re sharing someone else’s images, so credit the original source
• Don’t just repin other user’s images, pin your own content too
• Don’t pin more than 5 consecutive pins at a time (spread them out over time, otherwise people may begin unfollowing you)
• Don’t perplex your followers by pinning random things. Pin images to one of your corresponding boards. If a follower is following a board on kittens, and suddenly a motorbike shows up, they might unfollow.
• Don’t just pin images of your products or projects; expand your thinking a little. Show off your businesses personality by pinning images that express this.

Jargon buster

• Board – boards are a collection of images that are similar, or are about the same thing.
• Pin – a pin is an image that you have added to one of your boards.
• RePin – the when someone shares a pin from one of your boards.
• Comments and Likes – similar to Facebook, Pinterest lets you to like someone’s pin, or you can leave a comment.
• Pin it button – this can be added to your browser, which allows you to easily share something that you have found interesting, like a pin for instance.
• Follow – just like Twitter, you can choose to follow a user, or you can choose to follow a specific board that you find interesting.

Size guide

A few stats for you...

• pins with price tags included get 36% more likes than those that don’t,
• 69% of Pinterest users have found at least one item that they’ve bought or wanted to buy,
• 80% of users are women

Fat Shaming – Where’s the Love People?

Society pressures are with us everyday, and you may be surprised to learn that the celebs are no exception. Striving for perfection seems to be the aim of the day, and we all do it. We all create an illusive and unachievable image to struggle for, and it seems to be driving us all crazy

Newspapers, magazines, movie posters; they all feature photoshopped, airbrushed, nip tucked cover stars, with figures and flawless complexions achieved only with the aid of modern technology.

The pointlessness of striving to be THAT perfect isn’t a concept that most young teenagers can accept. The unattainability of this ideology can cause a twisted, self-prescribed image of ones self, and that in itself is a modern day travesty.

We know this really

We all know this really. Think about it. Who puts filter free photos on Facebook these days? Not very many people.

We’ve been doing this one for a while, but now it has a name. Fat Shaming. Pointing at celebs and judging. He without sin remember?

Look at it this way: how do you feel about your weight right now? Now picture this; thousands of people pointing at you and calling you fat while you continue your struggle in your battle to lose weight. How does that make you feel? Pretty sucky, right?

Celebrities aren’t bullet proof it would seem, and believe it or not, they have feelings just like the rest of us. Emotional abuse shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone, but just how are the celeb's even affected? Surely with all of their money and fame, nothing can touch them right?

Wrong. Do you remember watching ‘boy meets world’ when you were younger? The stunning actress, Danielle Fishel, recently got married to her long-term boyfriend Tim Belusko, but escape the taunts, she did not.

Celebs take to Twitter

She tweeted this on October 22^nd: "Ppl saying I was FAT at my wedding: You are the worst kind of people on the planet. I weigh 107 pounds and am 5'1". YOU are the reason anorexia exists."

She’s not the only one. We’ve all seen the images of Kim Kardashian in her third trimester. Granted, she did put on a lot of weight, but who cares? She was CARRYING A BABY. That’ll do that to you, you know.

Poor Kim spoke out, saying that,"every day I would hear people criticise me, and it would affect me. Little by little it would chip away at my soul."

And do you remember sweet 16 Mischa Barton from The O.C? (oh how we miss you O.C. Come back into our lives. Please) The constant weight remarks she received drove her to a breakdown. "It was a full-on breakdown," Barton said. "Straight out of ‘Girl, Interrupted.’ Story of my life. I was under enormous pressure. It was terrifying."

So if we can leave you with something to think about, it’s that the bitchy era of tormenting people for fun needs to be left at school with all of the other adolescent behaviours that we picked up, like rolling our skirts up, and plucking our eyebrows to nothing. There’s no place for it now.

Love yourself

Being a size 12 is not fat. Having some wobbly bits around your womanly areas gives you curves. It is not fat. Embrace a fuller figure; because as long as you are happy, maintain a healthy diet, and move your body regularly, you are fine. Obesity however, is an entirely different matter, of which you should absolutely do something about. Not tomorrow. Now.

Are you guilty of Fat Shaming?

7 Really, Really Bad Marketing Campaigns

Marketing is an interesting beast to tame. Some days it’s your best friend, working with you, ‘having your back’, making you lots of new friends; this is the good side. Then you catch it on a bad day and it turns into a raging animal of offensive, inappropriateness, and down right irrational behaviour.

When you’re a major brand, the levels of embarrassment caused by this unpredictable beast can reach an epic scale. There’s nowhere to hide when your disasters are displayed for literally the world to see, especially when they’re picked up by bloggers time and time again, for a fun and humorous blog post.

Pepsi Expands into China

When Pepsi decided to expand their presence in China, obviously their catchy slogan “Pepsi brings you back to life,” featured heavily in all of their marketing materials. And why wouldn’t it? The idea being that when you drink Pepsi, you become alert and awake; you’re brought back to life. Makes perfect sense.

Although little did Pepsi know, until it was too late, that their catchy international-market-breaking slogan, actually translated to, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” Oops.

Facebook is like…

A chair, apparently. Hang on, what? Facebook is like a chair? Really? Are you sure you’ve got that right Facebook? You’re saying that you’re like a chair?

With an increasing amount of media scrutiny and the whole IPO debacle, Facebook decided that what it really needed was a TV campaign that compared the worldwide social media platform to a chair.

Don’t Say the N-Word

Attempting to portray their sales staff as a generous and giving bunch of guys and gals, Renault rolled out their ‘don’t say the N-word’ campaign, and by the N-word, what they really meant was ‘No’ of course.

We guess nobody told them what everybody else believes the 'N-word' to be.

I Take a Sheet in the…

Now we all love a good, well thought through pun. They’re fun and they make your campaign memorable. Sometimes though, although the pun is very clever, it can be incredibly unsuitable and leave readers, especially those in the company of small children just old enough to read, feeling rather uncomfortable.

This is so hilariously inappropriate that you have to wonder; is this actually pure genius? I'm not sure. You decide.

Turkish Airlines are Going Down

Whoever placed this advertisement got it very, very wrong. Although the ad did go viral, the free publicity unfortunately didn’t get the airline an influx of business.

Oh well. On a positive note, before this, I never knew that Turkish Airlines even existed. 

And now I do? 

Nope. Definitely wouldn’t fly with them.

Starbucks Sucks

The main takeaway from this? Look at how your advertisement will look from all angles. We all know Starbucks doesn’t suck, but seeing this continually, we might start to believe it.

Unfortunate? Yes. Lazy? Yes. Funny as hell? Definitely. Put you off drinking Starbucks? Nah.

7-UP for Babies

There are no words.

Come on 7-up. Who came up with this? Shame. On. You.