Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

What’s that adage? “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; but teach a man to fish, and he’ll never go hungry.” Widely applied to the value of long-term investments, today we’ll learn why this biblical entreaty also applies to content marketing. Rather than feed your bottom line with a few entertaining pieces of content, or even a short-term campaign, content marketing can indeed be an ongoing source of sustenance for a business.

No one understands this better than David Beebe, who was VP Global and Creative Content Marketing at Marriott International for several years until just Monday, and a Content Engagement Award recipient at the most recent The CMO Club Awards. Under his leadership, Marriott’s global marketing department established its brands as preeminent travel lifestyle authorities through a never-ending storytelling program that focuses first on their audience.“

Now that consumers are in charge,” he told me, “we have to shift to not talking about ourselves, but what does that consumer want? How do I entertain them? How do I solve their problems? How do I build a relationship with them and provide value? Then, they’re more likely to pay attention to what I’m actually trying to sell.” Spend some time with Beebe’s story below, and learn how Marriott established its content marketing empire....

Anyone can create content online with a small budget, or even no budget at all - whether that content's any good is another issue.

An average piece of content can become superhero content when combined with an outstanding marketing strategy, while at the same time, an awesome piece of content might never get read or shared if the associated promotion activities are weak.

Digital marketers understand the value proposition of content marketing and its potential to bring in leads at a fraction of traditional marketing costs. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less in comparison to its traditional counterparts and generates up to 3x more leads.

The infographic outlines 40 tips on promoting and creating content to help you maximize both reach and return from your efforts....

Creativity and great ideas can be dosed in a masterly way of aninfographic. Those 14 infographics is proof of that. They are tremendously useful information, it does so with full creativity and originality. Although most of them are about web design, some of those is also for SEO professionals or graphic designers themselves. I recommend you take a look at them because from the visual and composition view are very well developed....

Repurposing is a common best practice among the most effective content creators: you can be much more efficient and prolific if you take a single idea and turn it 15 different ways rather than trying to come up with 15 brand new ideas.

Ideas are super hard to come by, and when you get a great one you have to grab on with both hands and squeeze as much value out of it as you can.

If you’re not sure what I mean by “repurposing,” think of it as taking a great idea and building off it to create something completely new. Kind of like IKEA Hacking, but for marketers.

Repurposing comes in three different flavors:

-  atomization, which is breaking a single asset up into smaller pieces;

-  aggregation, which is pulling smaller pieces together into larger long-form assets; and

-  amplification, which is using the themes & messages of your core content to create related pieces that build the strength of your brand’s connection to the idea/topic overall.

We’ll dive into each option separately so you can think about which method or methods makes sense for your content mix and marketing team....