Last month, an article posted on this blog about a 66-year-old Oregon packaging company and its revenue-generating products for the produce industry was sent by one of their sales reps to his prospects and customers.
It worked!
Before long, the company reported an increase in sales directly linked to the blog post. (http://tinyurl.com/l3cw6cc)
Then a produce industry trade magazine discovered the post, lifted quotes from it and published an article about the astonishing financial performance of the company’s Home-Toters® produce merchandising bags. It’s too soon to measure the effectiveness of that happy outcome (if it can directly be measured at all), but as with any productive Internet content, the post (and its derivatives) no doubt will have other lives.
Content marketing is a relatively new term based on a time-proven concept: if you come across an idea (content) you can put to work in your business, you’re likely to send it along to a colleague or friend who can use it in theirs. They, in turn, will spread it further—perhaps to places you’d never imagined, like that produce trade magazine.
“Salespeople love great content, because it’s an opportunity to reach out to customers and offer them something of value without asking for something in return,” says Frank Strong, a PR professional quoted today in The Content Strategist (http://contently.com/strategist/ ), an online publication about content marketing. Strong calls people like the packaging company rep “potential content champions.” (http://tinyurl.com/nlgn7y7 )
The key word in that phrase may be “potential,” because content marketing is only now beginning to take hold in business people’s minds (especially C-suite execs), and its strategic potential is practically unfathomable. Even an old hand like Bill Marriott, executive chairman and chairman of the board of
Marriott International, Inc., reportedly has taken to blogging after having been “evangelized” by an employee – he records his thoughts and depends on others to weave them into online content. If you read Marriott’s blog, you’ll see it’s nothing more than good old fashioned storytelling – like his life-affirming post about “deciding to decide”. (http://tinyurl.com/pxvnwf4 )
It worked!
Before long, the company reported an increase in sales directly linked to the blog post. (http://tinyurl.com/l3cw6cc)
Then a produce industry trade magazine discovered the post, lifted quotes from it and published an article about the astonishing financial performance of the company’s Home-Toters® produce merchandising bags. It’s too soon to measure the effectiveness of that happy outcome (if it can directly be measured at all), but as with any productive Internet content, the post (and its derivatives) no doubt will have other lives.
Content marketing is a relatively new term based on a time-proven concept: if you come across an idea (content) you can put to work in your business, you’re likely to send it along to a colleague or friend who can use it in theirs. They, in turn, will spread it further—perhaps to places you’d never imagined, like that produce trade magazine.
“Salespeople love great content, because it’s an opportunity to reach out to customers and offer them something of value without asking for something in return,” says Frank Strong, a PR professional quoted today in The Content Strategist (http://contently.com/strategist/ ), an online publication about content marketing. Strong calls people like the packaging company rep “potential content champions.” (http://tinyurl.com/nlgn7y7 )
The key word in that phrase may be “potential,” because content marketing is only now beginning to take hold in business people’s minds (especially C-suite execs), and its strategic potential is practically unfathomable. Even an old hand like Bill Marriott, executive chairman and chairman of the board of
Marriott International, Inc., reportedly has taken to blogging after having been “evangelized” by an employee – he records his thoughts and depends on others to weave them into online content. If you read Marriott’s blog, you’ll see it’s nothing more than good old fashioned storytelling – like his life-affirming post about “deciding to decide”. (http://tinyurl.com/pxvnwf4 )
LinkedIn Hops on the Content Bandwagon.
Anyone who’s read one of LinkedIn’s Influencer posts will have witnessed the appeal of content marketing. “For the past couple of years, LinkedIn has been slowly and effectively doubling down on content,” writes Joe Lazauskas in The Content Strategist. LinkedIn’s Head of Content Products, Ryan Roslansky, notes in the same article that LinkedIn Influencer posts "average nearly 31,000 pageviews and over 80 comments.” (http://tinyurl.com/oomqb2l ) People are no longer just trolling for job opportunities on LinkedIn, they’re increasingly looking to the business networking site for content that will help their businesses become more successful.
So why not you?
TakeAway: Got a valuable business story to share? Extend your reach through content marketing.
Content © by Brian E. Faulkner.
So why not you?
TakeAway: Got a valuable business story to share? Extend your reach through content marketing.
Content © by Brian E. Faulkner.
ABOUT BRIAN FAULKNER:
Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert. He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most. His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years. He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines. His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.
Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.
Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.
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