What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a term used to describe a wide umbrella of different digital marketing services. Your first thought may go to blog-style content on a website, but within that one service there are various components, such as SEO and affiliate networking. Organic social media is another essential service, which includes widely varying platforms including SnapChat, YouTube and beyond. So what exactly does a content marketing agency do?
To help guide content marketers, the below is a compiled list of content marketing services. All of these services are offered by the experts at Hawke Media, so your brand is in good hands with our help.
1. Blog Content Management
The cornerstone of what a content marketing agency does is often a blog. This is a place where the company can flex its expertise to prove its value as an industry leader. A blog should share valuable information, respond to current events and trends and publish findings and best practices. Blog content in the form of featured articles and Q&As, for example, drives traffic to your website and builds trust and authority.
2. Email Content Management
Most people may find your content via online search, but the most engaged audience comes from email. Whether newsletters drive traffic to online blogs or serve as a standalone read, they should work in tandem with an overall content strategy. Even your most sales-oriented emails will benefit from content that emphasizes the brand’s helpfulness and expertise.
3. Landing Page Management
As with a sales-focused email, any respectable landing page should offer content that supports the primary CTA. As dry as sales copy may seem sometimes, content marketing can help splash and landing pages tell a story and compel readers to convert.
4. Media Writing
Gone are the days when a company can release a half-page write-up and expect it to be covered by media outlets. A strong press release tells a story, engages readers and delivers information succinctly. Press releases should always involve the marketing team to elevate the content in a way that best serves the brand.
Other types of media writing can include journalistic-based features or case studies. This is information about your brand or your brand’s sphere of influence, presented in a way that boosts brand recognition and sentiment.
5. Photography
Traditional content marketing is associated with lifestyle images, evoking thoughts of satisfied customers. Product photography, however, can also be a part of a cohesive content strategy. All work in the single voice that your company needs to be speaking across your website, social media and email.
6. Videography
Videos have become the main approach to social media marketing. They populate algorithms for devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Videography is essential to an engaging content marketing strategy, whether it lives on product pages, your About Us page, social media or elsewhere.
Different types of video content include product demos, high-quality webinar recordings, tutorials, etc. These are hosted on a variety of different platforms, depending on the goal of the video. For a short, marketing video you want to go viral, you could be fine hosting on TikTok. For evergreen videos tied to the core of your brand, consider hosting them on YouTube or Vimeo and then embedding them on your site.
7. Social Media
Social media may be the first thing you think of when you think of content marketing. Ideally, great content fuels your social media presence so that all content works as one cohesive ecosystem, but sometimes a social media account can go viral and take on a life of its own, and that’s okay too if it still accomplishes the goals of the brand.
Social media can’t just be a place to spout off your other forms of content; each channel has to speak to its own audience. For instance, on LinkedIn, focus on philanthropy, company culture etc. Twitter should be helpful and professional takes on current events within your own company, industry and beyond.
You’ve heard the spiels before, but the truth is that a constant and consistent social media presence is a huge task and will require all kinds of video, design and written content.
8. Graphics
Graphics are an important and sometimes overlooked component of content marketing. Infographics can serve the same function as an educational blog post, but in a more palatable and shareable way. They can provide endless content to specific visual social platforms such as Pinterest or even Instagram, which drives traffic to your site. Or, graphics can simply enhance other content mediums, such as illustrating points made in blog posts, making an email more engaging and so on.
9. Downloadables
Downloadable content, often called gated content when it is downloadable in exchange for customer data such as email address or phone number, can include ebooks, industry reports, how-to guides and more. This kind of content can be a premier driver of new leads and business. This is especially true for, although not exclusively, B2B companies.
10. User Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content can take any form, from text, posts, images, videos, reviews, etc. created by individual people and published to an online or social network. This content usually comes from paying customers and never comes from the brands themselves. However, brands often use the content for a more organic and trustworthy approach to content marketing. UGC has continued to grow in importance for marketers, and the trend won’t slow down anytime soon.
BONUS: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is not the content itself, but essential to the fabric of all your content, even in non-copy-based items like videos and visuals. In a well-oiled content machine, copy is optimized for search engine results as it’s being created. If your content marketing is not written to be friendly to Google, it will have a hard time its potential as a leading traffic driver. If you’re already far along the content path and need to go back for SEO, there are services such as SEO audits and monthly management.
Content Marketing Is the Cornerstone
How does this list help you? It can serve as a checklist to see how comprehensive your brand’s content efforts are, or it can provide a roadmap as you expand your marketing team. If you’re brand new to this branch of marketing, it can serve as an explainer of where to get started and understand what does a content marketing agency do, exactly. Successful content marketing can and should be the cornerstone of a brand’s overall digital marketing strategy. It dictates the voice and tone of the company, drives traffic to the website and engages customers and prospects at every part of the funnel.
For expert content strategists and writers, contact Hawke today. Month-to-month contracts and a la carte services make it so you can have a reliable CMO to refer to, or just bring in experts for a specific project. Get started today.
