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Blurring the Lines: Marketers as Content Creators
DuPont sponsors Jeff Gordon’s Nascar, but have you seen their new science video content? Ford is a perennial super bowl advertiser, but they also produce the Ford Bold Moves campaign.
These are just two examples of traditional advertisers blurring the lines between advertiser and publisher, and we’re seeing more and more of these “pubvertisers” emerge every day. But, advertisers producing original content is not something reserved just for big name brand advertisers. Original content is a great way for any company to engage their customers and build relationships beyond the traditional advertising model.
The content will vary from case to case, and smart marketers will know what kind of content and what format will engage people. But the actual content creation is just the beginning. From there, this content becomes a tool to spread a marketing message around the web, drive traffic back to your website and spark the viral and word-of-mouth marketing process. Here’s how…
When content resides on your website, it does provide value to web users who have found your site, but its potential to reach and engage new customers is not being leveraged. Posting your video content to YouTube or your podcasts to iTunes is an obvious step to getting content out there, but RSS feeds and social media are two mediums that significantly expand the possibilities to get your marketing message in front of many more consumers and spread virally.
RSS makes your content dynamic. Think of RSS as a way to move content. This means, putting it on any website, feeding it into a widget or making it the content of an online ad. What makes each of these applications of RSS unique is that the content updates automatically with the feed - when you add new content, it is immediately syndicated anywhere your RSS feeds are displayed. Putting your content in ad units across the web puts it in front of a huge number of potential customers and takes the pain and cost out of constantly updating the ad creative. Ultimately, this content will not only spread your message to more people, but help to drive traffic back to your site. The content is engaging, it’s more that just a Las Vegas style banner ad blinking click here, buy now, and because it updates automatically, return visitors to websites it appears on will always be presented with fresh new content to interact with or subscribe to.
Social media extends RSS and helps spread that content further. If someone sees your content and clicks through to your website, that’s great. What’s even more valuable though is the person seeing that content, emailing it to a friend or posting it to Digg, and then clicking through to your website. All the consumer needs is the tools to engage with social media. In distributing original content, always provide ways for people to do more with that content. Click-throughs are just the beginning — social media is where the real viral and word-of-mouth potential lies.
It all starts with content creation. Interesting original content such as DuPont’s science videos engage customers, built trust and show a level of expertise for your company while allowing you to build your brand. This is an important step in the process, but the distribution and syndication strategy of this content becomes the integral way to reach new customers with your marketing message and drive traffic to your website. RSS and social media working together offer a combination of flexibility, scalability and consumer assistance in extending the reach of your company. For marketers, it’s no longer just about the traditional means of spreading your message and brand, but about becoming a publisher of original content to reach an increasingly sophisticated web audience that no longer responds to methods of traditional online marketing.
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