Content or the message is everything we still hear.
Well, almost… but if it’s unseen, brands end up dying with their own secret.
To this day, we still see some Australian clients and their agencies trying to develop content fail by following a traditional ‘creative’ process that considers the distribution of their content far too late in the day.
Not only do they not consider distribution, they also don’t consider platforms and formats – meaning a piece of content that might work great as a video on YouTube, doesn’t work in more important environments where the audience actually might be.
Having spent most of the budget on the creative and production process, clients and agencies then want to amplify it, but often fail because they haven’t got the ratios right and haven’t thought about formats.
Many a client then dies with their own secret because they spend too much on the craft and not enough on amplifying that in media to ensure that enough eyeballs get in front of that content. It happens with much greater frequency than you think.
Successful content idea generation must consider distribution strategy right at the very start of the process, and not the end.
It’s a fine balance and requires a mind shift away from 'what do we want the consumer to know?' towards 'what do our audiences want?'. It also requires an understanding of the nuanced differences between content distribution channels and the way audiences prefer to engage with these channels.
We are now seeing a divide between marketers that are embracing a content led approach versus those mired in a traditional advertising approach (essentially pushing out advertising as content).
Smartphones have changed the way we access the internet. Multiple, short sessions has made us habitual ‘snackers’, rapidly moving in and out of content, with shorter attention spans than ever. This has led to the explosion of platforms and content formats – images, animations, infographs, cinemagraphs, micro-video, short-form video, live video, video without sound and much more.
The real art to content marketing actually lies outside of the content itself and is more based on an understanding of the way audiences engage and behave across a broad spectrum of platforms and formats.
Only then can you determine how a brand should engage with them, and how often, to drive the desired brand response.
When this is understood, content development becomes much easier in terms of the quality of the content and the amount of content actually needed.
We have the platforms, tools and formats to deliver on this and reach our audience with quality content that they consume on their terms. The trick is delivering a coherent stream of content.
We’ve created a world of confusion for marketers with creative, media, social, content, digital, PR and many more agencies all claiming they can do content, social content, and more. The end result is a mish mash of unrelated content.
There is a simple solution, it needs orchestration. You simply need a conductor that harnesses the many talents you have at your disposal and brings them together as one.
Simon Rutherford is CEO of independent media agency Slingshot.