Thursday, June 7, 2012

Content Marketing: From Noise To Poise





Gary Who?
In case you were wondering whom the passionate guy on the video was; his name is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is an author, speaker, and noted social media maven. However, he did not start in the social media space he started in business by working in his dad’s liquor store and in five years time he took the small store in to a multi-million enterprise. 

A big part of his success has been by creating daily video content on the top wines his store was bringing in. After about 18 months of posting videos he caught the attention of  The Wall Street Journal, Conan O’brian and other major media outlets.

So Gary has first hand knowledge of the power of content marketing.

Is Your Content A Commodity?
One of the first things he talks about is how content is a commodity. The number one mistake a company can make in their marketing strategy is not seeing the true value of creating compelling content. Content that is engaging  conditions the end-user to take some form of action.

When your company just creates “push” style content that just talks about the company in a age of low attention span you run the risk of losing visitors.

An example of a company that is doing it wrong is one that spends 80% pushing out content that is focused on the company’s products, services, sales, etc.

The Interest Graph
Studies show that this incorrect content creation could be the cause of a ‘content bubble’, similar to the Internet bubble or the real estate bubble. The only companies that will survive this bubble that is on the horizon will have a strong understanding of their potential customers interest graph. 

What is an interest graph? An interest graph refers to the specific and varied interests that form one’s personal identity. Unlike a social graph, an interest  graph includes a network of people that may not necessarily know one another but share the same interest.

The interest graph also has broad implications for B2B marketers where the graph will be based on the macro interest of the industry.

The Human Approach
The company that gets it right not only understands the interests that connects their customers, but go the next step and show how much they care about them as human beings. 

An example of the company  that is doing it right creates 80% of content that is focused on empowering customers to make the best buying decisions no matter where they make their final purchase.


What Are Your Thoughts?

  • As a marketer how can you avoid creating content that is just noise?
  • What steps will you take to get an understanding of the content that is of interest to your customers?