Post, Ping and Pray is *Not* a Content Marketing Strategy

Today I wanna talk about a fundamental error I see many companies make with regard to Content Marketing.

They create something.

They post it somewhere.

They ping their social channels.

Then they breathlessly ask, “How’d we do?”

Then they move on to the Next Thing.

Back in the day it was a (so-called) “viral video” cuz those were cool.  More recently infographics have been all the rage.  We’ve seen renewed interest as well in well-designed e-books and slideshows.  The content changes but the marketing strategy rarely evolves – beyond the addition of new outposts, e.g.:

“We’ll tweet it; we’ll post it to Facebook; we’ll upload it to (YouTube or Slideshare); we’ll post it to our LinkedIn page; and pin it on Pinterest!”

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Sure, often times more than one Ping! is totally appropriate.

But if you make the resource investment in content creation you need to make an even bigger investment in marketing that content.

That might mean committing to editorial placement …That might mean tapping a paid content syndication network … That might mean running a contextual SEM campaign … That might mean running social ads that drive more users to your content … That might mean an email marketing campaign to your opt-in fans … That might mean a special outreach effort to your known Ambassadors, asking them to spread the content across their own social graphs … etc.

Now, sit back and re-read that last paragraph.  Slowly, this time.  Don’t just skim it.  Think about the exponential value you might attain for each piece of content you’ve taken the time to create, if you also took the time to market it appropriately and vigorously.

Todd Defren
CEO

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