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“Owned media” and “broadcasting platform” – I know, these sound fancy words, but actually they are not. Owned media means the content that you create and publish on your own website, blog and under your social media profiles like YouTube and Instagram, and broadcasting platform is the presence that you create due to your content.
For example, let’s say you create a blog where you give advice to people about how to use your product or service. For example, on this content writing blog, I’m constantly talking about content writing and content marketing and content publishing. For me, the blog posts that I am constantly publishing is “owned media” – I own this content. When people come to read my blog posts on this blog, it becomes a broadcasting platform. I use this platform to broadcast my thoughts.
Up till now brands have been using third-party media and third-party broadcasting platforms to reach out to their customers and clients. For example, if you advertise on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and even Google’s AdWords, you’re using third-party broadcasting platforms. These companies have created broadcasting platforms through their own content and have built up an audience and now they are charging you to expose your brand in front of their audience.
Whether this works or not is another issue because for some it works and for some it doesn’t, but when you consider the amount of money and effort that you save by owning your own content and building your own broadcasting platform you suddenly realise what you have been missing by simply focusing on the third-party content and the third-party broadcasting platforms.
But let’s not talk about big businesses that have enough money to advertise on TV and newspapers. What about a small business? Does it make sense for the small business to own its own content and build its own broadcasting platform?
Again, no matter how fancy these terms sound, they are very simple. If you have a presence on YouTube, you have your own broadcasting platform. If you have a presence on Instagram, you have your own broadcasting platform. Wherever you have got an audience for yourself, wherever people go to check out your updates, is your broadcasting platform.
So, choose a platform and start creating your own content. The content that you own. It will be cheaper. It will be more effective. The results will be far-reaching.
This HubSpot blog post explains in detail is why even advertising agencies should stop investing in advertising and instead, should start investing in their own content, in owned media.
Repurposing old content means creating different versions of the content that already exists on your website or blog. Do you have many blog posts and articles already written on your website? Have you gained all the benefit that you could have gained from the content you have written or generated so far?
It is a necessity that you constantly need to write new content. You can also use your existing content to create new content. This is called repurposing your old/existing content.
Suppose you have a blog post that you wrote a couple of years ago that was received very well by your audience but right now it isn’t getting much attention may be because it is old or maybe people have moved on. The information contained within that blog post is still valuable. What do you do?
Here are a few things you can do with that old blog post in order to repurpose your existing content
Create a slideshow of the main points – People love slideshows created in PowerPoint and other presentation tools. Extract the main points of your old blog post and then create individual slides from those main points along with attractive visuals. Then distribute that slide’s repurposed content.
Rewrite the blog post with a new perspective – Wisdom is eternal but there are always new ways of making use of that wisdom. Technology has changed in the past two years (since you wrote that blog post). Even the way people do content marketing has changed. Why not rewrite the old blog post by adding more information, updated information to it?
Create graphic visuals of important portions – There might be many important portions – a paragraph, a couple of sentences – that you can take from the blog post and combine them with related images and then create graphics. Then you can upload those graphics to Pinterest or simply share them on Facebook and Twitter.
Post important and impactful sentences from the old blog post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
These are just a few ideas that you can use to repurpose your existing content. You can come up with many more according to your niche.
Or when you shouldn’t. It depends on what you want. The problem with people’s attitude is that since content writing is mostly writing, they think it should either be free but it should be available at a very low cost. So low that one doesn’t even feel it. So, the moment it comes to paying a content writer, people start wondering, why should I pay for a content writer?
Everybody can write, right? You write emails. You write Facebook posts. You post updates on Twitter and LinkedIn. So how difficult would it be to quickly write a blog post or a webpage or an article?
Mostly two types of people hire me for their content writing needs and eagerly pay me:
Those who are not comfortable writing business-critical copy and content. Although they have basic writing skills they’re not confident that their writing skills will be able to get them business. They want impeccable writing. They want a writing style that engages their visitors. Most of them want the writing to be casual, but error-free.
Those who are, although, comfortable writing business-critical copy and content, cannot do it consistently over a long time. They want someone who can create great content on an ongoing basis. They are looking for a content writer they can rely on. Once they have assigned topics, they want to be rest assured that content will be delivered on time and according to their guidelines.
You should spend money on a content writer if you really want to use your content as an asset. You value your content. You recognize its importance. You know that your content can take your business places. You realise that quality content writing improves your conversion rate and if search engine rankings matter to you, it improves your search engine rankings.
There is a gentleman in Itarsi, a very small industrial town in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. His business doesn’t have a website. He uses my services for his official correspondence. Though, you can write in Hindi, he cannot write in English. So he jots down whatever he wants to say on a paper, and clicks a photo with his camera and then sends the image to me on WhatsApp and within a few minutes, I send him back a professionally written communication in English. So yes, although he doesn’t have a website, he pays for my content writing services because he values what I deliver.
When I started providing content writing and content marketing services more than 10 years ago, content marketing mostly constituted of publishing blog posts, broadcasting a newsletter and publishing articles and blog posts on other websites and blogs. People were quite happy writing lots of stuff. We were writing articles, tutorials, how to’s, and in the process, attracting decent amount of traffic to our websites.
Then a new breed of content marketers started experimenting with visual content. I remember, initially they used attractive graphics and imagery along with textual content. Gradually, in fact, not gradually, but quite fast, they started replacing textual content with infographics. They started presenting useful, insightful information, with the help of very attractive and slick visuals.
Along with visuals, videos also became an integral part of content marketing. GIF files for some time appeared here and there, but they lost to videos, but then again, they are in vogue with the advent of giphy.com.
In fact, visual content has become so mainstream that recently I came across a keyboard that types just emojis. There is an instant messaging app that just allows you to send emojis instead of text messages.
All mainstream instant messaging apps like Snapchat and Instagram heavily depend on images and videos. On Facebook and Twitter, updates that contain images and videos get more views and likes compared to the updates that contain just text.
So yes, visual content is as important, if not more, as textual content for your content marketing. Text is important, as of now, because it is down to earth, and not everybody wants to see just images and videos. Sometimes you just want to read text so content writing isn’t going to be replaced very soon.
In fact, most business websites depend on content writing for their content marketing needs. Whereas visual content requires some sort of platform, content writing can be accommodated almost everywhere. Even the images need to contain some sort of text to convey a message. This is why, no matter how much importance visual content gains, content writing for content marketing is indispensable.
But this blog post is about the importance of visual content for content marketing.
Visual content is everywhere these days due to many reasons. It’s way too easy to notice an image or video in your rapidly changing timeline than text. According to these insightful statistics on importance of visual content for content marketing, 51% B2B marketers preferred to publish visual content in 2016. Here is another very useful blog post on the importance of visual content and how it is gaining traction compared to textual content.
There is a misconception that creating visual content is difficult compared to content writing. Of course it is, comparatively, difficult, it is not as difficult as it is perceived.
For example, there are many online image editing tools available that allow you to create very attractive graphics. Videos can be created using an average mobile phone. GIF files can be created using giphy.com. Simple text messages can be created using image files. You can create PowerPoint slides and then export them into video files and then upload those videos on YouTube. Later on, you can convert certain portions of those YouTube videos to GIF files.
If you have been ignoring visual content for content marketing simply because you think that it will be difficult to produce, just start with shorter images and videos. You will be surprised to know how easy and interesting it is to create them.
Although, by the beginning of 2016, 88% marketers admitted that content marketing is an integral part of their overall marketing strategy (source), very few understand what is content marketing in its true sense and why it is more effective than traditional marketing.
If you don’t feel like reading the entire blog post, in the video given below I have explained in detail what content marketing is and how it can help you grow your business:
In terms of process and strategy, content marketing can be represented through the following tangle:
The three main steps involved in content marketing are
Developing useful content
Publishing that useful content
Distributing that useful content
These are the fundamental activities but these activities can be further expanded into more points:
Studying your market to know what sort of content is needed.
Developing useful content according to the conclusion of the study mentioned in step 1 in such a manner that it also allows you to talk about your business.
Publishing your content using the platform preferred by your audience (you find this through step 1) – your own blog or website, guest blogging on other blogs and websites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, email newsletters, Medium, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc.
Distributing your content through the channels preferred by your audience – your own blog, guest blogging on other blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, email newsletters, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc.
Using web analytics to study what sort of impact your content marketing strategy is making (now step 1 becomes a combination of step 1 and step 5, so now this is the new step 1).
Continue with step 2 onwards.
By developing, publishing, and distributing highly useful and valuable content over a long period of time (the steps mentioned above) you develop a platform for yourself.
People begin to relate your presence with great value.
What is valuable content in Content Marketing?
It depends on your business. You can develop, publish and distribute useful content by
Keeping people informed
Educating people
Making them laugh or making them feel sentimental
Reviewing products and services for them
Providing them privileged information
Basically, providing them something they value, something that they don’t mind getting access to or being delivered on an ongoing basis.
This, is what valuable content is.
What is content marketing according to renowned marketers?
Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly-defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
~ Content Marketing Institute
Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers.
~ Amanda Maksymiw
Content marketing is a device used by companies to educate, inform or entertain customers or prospects by creating attention or causing behavior that results in leads, sales or advocacy.
~ Jay Baer
Content Marketing is anything a company creates and shares to tell their story. It is conversational, human and doesn’t try to constantly sell to you.
~ Ann Handley
Content marketing is, creating a following of dedicated audience through providing valuable, timely and relevant content to people over a long period of time, so that they begin to trust you and want to do business with you on their own.
~ Amrit Hallan
Why content marketing works better than traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing, as you already know, is one-way. You’re constantly telling people to do business with you whether at that time, they want to do business with you or not. The traditional marketing doesn’t care whether people want to hear from you or not.
Traditional marketing uses channels that have already been built. The entire process is unscientific. People come across your marketing message when they are least expecting it or even when they are feeling hostile towards it.
Content marketing on the other hand, allows you to build your own broadcasting channel. When you develop and publish useful content, people seek you out to access that content on their own. You don’t have to advertise. People come to your website or the platform you use to publish your content, on their own.
By developing, publishing and distributing useful content on a prolonged basis, you develop a loyal audience of people who look forward to hearing from you.
You, your business name, or your brand, becomes familiar to them and they begin to trust you because of the non-stop value you deliver.
After you have successfully implemented your content marketing strategy, there are two ways people will do business with you:
Scenario 1: They need what you provide and they know you provide it and since they already know you and trust you, they approach you rather than someone they don’t know.
Scenario 2: You tell them what you provide and if and when they need it, they are going to get it from you rather than someone they don’t know.
So, the basic purpose of Content Marketing is, to be present in people’s lives in such a manner that you provide value to them on an ongoing basis while making sure they always remember what business you are in.
Once you have created such presence its positive impact is long-lasting.
“Owned media” and “broadcasting platform” – I know, these sound fancy words, but actually they are not. Owned media means the content that you create and publish on your own website, blog and under your social media profiles like YouTube and Instagram, and broadcasting platform is the presence that you create due to your content.
