If you haven’t already said RIP to the old-school methods of traditional marketing techniques, then as the new year dawns, you might do well to say your goodbyes. It’s out with the old and in with the new, and today’s most successful digital marketers are all about promoting their goods, services and brand names through the creation of top notch content.
Not only does super sharp content grab the attention of potential consumers with both hands, it serves to help build a relationship with your current customers too – giving value and establishing your brand as an expert in your chosen field. The traditional methods of marketing can’t really compete in the mind of the consumer with this sort of princely deal.
But of course, ensuring your business is delivering quality content consistently is easier than done. We constantly see organisations struggling to get their heads round the concept and consequently producing poor quality content which simply disappears into the ether of the internet in a puff of digital smoke, winning them no fans and, more importantly, no business.
So, what’s an organisation that’s tearing its hair out over the concept of good quality content to do?
Perhaps the way forward for those that want to up their content marketing game in 2016 is to utilise the world of big data analytics. Why? Because big data might just be the key to setting the parameters of what we actually mean by ‘good content’. Collating information on current and target customers is hardly an innovative idea in the marketing world, but big data goes a little deeper, pulling together the strands from a myriad of sources, such as social platforms, to weave a comprehensive picture of the sort of content your target group prefers. Big data can provide insight into what drives your target audience, how they respond to content and how they like it best delivered – and your content marketing strategy can flourish as a results.
Big data versus analytics – what’s the difference?
Despite the fact that organisations all over the globe and across a variety of industries are utilising their understanding of big data to learn more about their business and fine-tune their marketing efforts, the line between big data and analytics can become blurred. After all, the two are closely related. However, there are a few key differences. As pointed out by the Harvard Business Review, big data differs from analytics in volume (the immense amount of digital data on offer), velocity (the speed of data with real-time or near real-time information allowing organisations to execute decisions quicker), and variety (big data comes in many forms, from email and text messages to GPS signals from mobile devices and social media). Big data may have gained a reputation for being unstructured and unwieldy compared to neat, clean analytics, but there is an awful lot of essential information that comes along with the background noise – it just needs to be mined correctly.
How big data can help you
The ultimate aim when it comes to creating content is to produce something original and attention-grabbing, that compels consumers to share. Even if your business never hits the golden goal of a post going viral, consistently high quality content, managed and shared in the right way can gradually boost your company’s profile, establishing you as a thought leader and authority in your industry.
Big data can help direct the creation of your content and help you develop posts, infographics and any other type of content your customers are interested in, driving traffic to your website and bringing you to the attention of a wider audience. Big data can help you evaluate how your content is performing on your own website so you can ascertain which types of content and topics are the most popular and which are leaving your audience cold. It can show you when the most effective time is to publish new content and what sort of posts encourage your consumers to hang around on your website that little bit longer. Big data can also help you keep one eye on the competition and find out how successful the content published by others in your industry might be. This could help you maximise opportunities by expanding on the more popular topics out there as well as avoiding the pitfalls that your competitors fall into. Big data can assist in fine-tuning your social content, allowing you an insight into the reach of your posts and that all-important engagement – the comments and shares that your content might generate.
As an article published by Gartner at the end of last year stated, the marriage of “big data’s science, and content marketing’s art… [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][will provide] a new opportunity for digital marketers to reach and engage audiences like never before”.
As content marketers, we look forward to Gartner’s vision of the Age of Big Content developing, where the focus is on combining ‘the precision of big data with relevant content’ and on better quality content that ‘speaks authentically, not commercially’. After all, we always have time for valuable and stimulating new content in our line of work.
If you need some assistance in polishing up your content marketing, contact M2 Bespoke today to find out how we can help your business.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]