Most of us marketers and business owners have long trusted the "professionals" (newspapers, trade publications, etc.) to write and publish industry-relevant information. We learned through the years that if we spent enough money on advertising in those publications, we might have enough leverage to get them to publish our press releases, write or publish an article or two on our successes, and even present us with an occasional top product/service award. But as the publishing business has faltered in the last decade, the impact of our traditional marketing efforts has diminished along with the true reach of these publications.
Consumers have turned from traditional media to online content for their information—and not just the online version of the old print publications, but new bloggers and thought leaders whose influence most often can't be bought. So how do we stay relevant and get our message out if we can’t count on traditional publications to do more for less (which is exactly what they would need to do in order to make it worthwhile)? Content marketing is certainly the answer. While we have been advocating for quality content since our earliest efforts, we didn’t truly commit to inbound marketing and content marketing ourselves until a just few years ago. Frankly, part of the holdup was that the notion of producing fresh new content on a prescribed daily, weekly, monthly schedule required us to embrace our inner publisher.
Most of us that are responsible for marketing have never really considered ourselves publishers, even if we are proud of some of the content we’ve produced through the years. But making a real commitment to inbound marketing and content marketing requires us to also commit to the reality that we are therein becoming publishers. With that reality comes the requirements of:
- identifying your audience personas
- defining your content niche
- establishing your goals
- producing a content marketing strategy
- developing a content marketing vision statement
- developing a content marketing team
- taking an inventory of your existing content resources
- producing a content production and publishing schedule
- monitoring and measuring the results
- making adjustments to address your findings
While it makes sense that making a commitment to content marketing requires that you get in touch with your inner publisher, wrapping your head around all that that means can certainly be challenging. It means a change in the way you think about marketing. It means that you have to stop thinking in terms of campaigns, and start thinking in terms of long-term strategy.
It also means that you must look at the effort not as a short-term bump in sales or traffic, but as a commitment to increasing the perceived value of your brand in the marketplace over the long haul. We’ve seen enormous success result from making this shift, but the payoff doesn’t happen overnight. While it is hard to embrace a marketing approach that takes six months before seeing results, the results are substantive and—unlike many other marketing/advertising efforts—capable of propelling your business to the next level.
If you’d like to learn more about how you too can embrace the publisher within, please let us help. That’s what we’re here for.
