When it comes to your brand’s content and marketing strategy, it can be tempting to make it all about you. Whilst it is true that you and the products and services you provide need to feature, it’s important to note that that alone will not get people’s attention. What will do the job, however, is weaving value-added content in amongst all the more brand-focused pieces you put out into the world.
Why is value-added content important?
Value-added content provides your audience with information that they would struggle to get anywhere else. It may be entertaining, but most importantly it is popular with viewers because of the educational value it carries. They may be able to take something away from the content they’ve consumed and solve a problem they’ve been experiencing, or work out an entirely new way of doing something that is far more efficient and practical than what they’ve been doing up to now. It helps to position your brand as a voice of authority – an expert, if you will – on the wider subject matter that your content relates to, which really helps your audience get to know, like and trust you before they’ve even become a customer.
It is super easy to build value-added content into your brand’s marketing strategy – here are a five ways you can get started:
Blog posts
An obvious starting point is blog posts not too dissimilar to the one that you are reading right now. These are a great way to directly answer the most common search queries people have – the main thing to remember is to always stay relevant to the search query you’re hoping to answer. The more focused you can be, the helpful and therefore more valuable the post will be to the reader, which in turn will be rewarded by Google.
Videos
Video content will always be engaging. It is multi-dimensional, and with all platforms favouring video posts, views are growing rapidly. You can take very much the same approach as you would with blog posts, or even repurpose them and turn them into video essays. The beauty of the big push on video content is that it is now easier than ever before to create and distribute whatever you produce using the tools embedded in social media platforms alone, so even if you don’t have the means for professional video production, this isn’t a medium that is off-limits to you.
E-books
Contrary to what popular opinion would have you believe, there is still a very real desire for long-form content. E-books and white papers are real opportunities for you to do a deep-dive on any given subject, and creating an ‘ultimate guide’ will position you as a trusted authority. They perhaps require the most research of all the methods featured in this post as they do need to be all-encompassing, but the devil is in the detail and the work will pay off. You know yourself that there is nothing better than finding a single post that answers all of your questions on a topic, so to be the person providing that value for someone else will work wonders for your brand.
Newsletters
Your audience probably won’t need the inside scoop on the minute-by-minute developments that occur within your industry as it simply won’t be relevant and could lead to information overload. However, there is no doubt that certain developments will be of interest – why not create a newsletter that curates all of the industry information that affects your audience? Lay out all of the best information in accessible points that are relevant to your readers. Applying how these developments will affect them is the key here, because it is one thing to know about the changes in isolation, but what they mean in the context of the real world will add another layer of value that will be absolutely golden.
Webinars
Webinars are great for delivering product insights, services and research. There is no doubt that you can cover just about anything in a lot of depth with a webinar, but it is important to make sure that everything that is featured in them adds value as there is also a significant time investment required of viewers.
KC Creative 