Content, Social & SEO Lead Customers to Great Experiences
My friend Bob Knorpp has a excellent piece on AdAge this week:”Why Marketers Should Break Free of the Digital Content Trap” about the fallacy of content. He makes some excellent points about companies going through the motions of making and promoting content on social channels with motivations of retweets, likes, shares and links over real engagement. I have to agree where he says, “content alone is a dead end for ongoing engagement”.
While many savvy online marketers don’t see content as a shortsighted substitute for social strategy or simply as a SEO tactic, but a proxy to making customer experiences, there are even more who do. Content is a vehicle for discovery, engagement and sharing. Content is the mechanism for storytelling and if social and search optimization are also involved in a qualitative way to aid in discovery and sharing of those tales – then all the better.
Bob makes fantastic points about the need to reckon of new ways to approach digital storytelling beyond single dimensions like videos that “go viral” and infographics that spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook. Engagement is to be sure more than a click, a share or a link.
In the way that many business bloggers and marketers approach online marketing with an egocentric perspective, promoting messages they want to persuade audiences with vs. empathizing with customer needs and interests, many agencies that make content are more interested in creative self expression over experiences that are truly meaningful to customers.
In our Hub / Spoke and Constellation models for content marketing, we emphasize an understanding of customer needs and behaviors through persona development and attention to variances during the buying cycle. Those insights, combined with ongoing monitoring and engagement, drive content marketing strategy and the creative mix of content objects designed to help prospects have meaningful experiences with the brand.
The content itself is made simpler to learn in more relevant ways through search engine optimization and social media optimization. A “Socialize and Optimize” approach to content marketing increases the connections between consumers that are looking (i.e. searching) and discussing (social networking) topics of relevance to the brand solution.
I’ve said it before, fantastic content isn’t fantastic until it’s learned, consumed and mutual. Littering the social web with scheduled Tweets, reputation updates and blog posts alone is not engagement and certainly not making the kind of experience that builds brand or motivates customers to buy, be loyal or advocate.
What say you? Can fantastic user experience and storytelling co-exist with social media marketing and SEO?
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Content, Social & SEO Lead Customers to Fantastic Experiences | http://www.toprankblog.com