The three crucial elements of every Content Marketing campaign
Rather than scroll through the other 604 words, the answers are: audience, activation and analytics. There you go a TL;DR version gratis and free of charge. But read on… this one is where the Venn diagram of content marketing intersects with East Coast US music-makers.
Hopefully for those practising, or benefitting from, a comprehensive content marketing strategy, this (the audience/activation/analytics thing) won’t come at any great surprise. Do give me a call if it is. But, how these three interact and how agencies and brands contribute to this triumvirate does need further investigation and planning if it’s to be successful.
I’ve been helping Solomon Childs, a rapper from Staten Island with his social media and it’s been an interesting experience for both of us. Not least because we’re based on different sides of the Atlantic. Throughout, I’ve tried to ensure those three elements are kept in mind. As far as audience goes, that’s his thing. He knows who his existing fans are, he knows what other music and artists they like and he knows (crucially) how to speak to them. Too often, though, there is an assumption by agencies, and occasionally practitioners, about the audience the client/brand wants to converse with.
The constant striving to increase reach and engagement numbers can result in some weird editorial decisions. The case of the Listerine influencer (and it certainly wasn’t Scarlett London at fault) is one example of a brand misreading its intended audience with a questionable influencer choice — though kudos on the PR. However, some news organisations are equally at fault. The BBC News Instagram account covers the important stories of the day domestic, foreign and political, but also some really (really) trivial ones. The problem? Publication decisions are being made according to the audience on Instagram, rather than the audience the brand should be aiming for.
Activation is one Solomon and I are both working on. He has one aim: to get more people streaming more of his music, more often. To do this we went through his existing channels, his strategy for each, the content (and constraints) each platform requires and how much time he had to create and write the content. It’s important he does it himself for authenticity, but it would be wrong to write for Instagram or Twitter — he has to write for his audience/potential audiences on those platforms. So activation and programming is something we work on together. Occasionally brands are blindsided with new platforms to program and don’t have the capacity to manage or community manage them. Activation is as much about precision targeting, rather than shotgunning every piece of content across every channel available. It’s about taking the time to tailor what you produce to the audience on that platform.
Analytics is what everyone cares about, but occasionally aren’t used properly. How many times have reports been produced which shows lots of numbers (and oooh, big numbers!), but no argument, rationale or subsequent action. The best use of analytics and of data has always been to start backwards. What do we want to measure, how do we measure that with the data available and what do we do once we have those numbers. How many times have we sat through interminable Powerpoint presentations which have graphs, figures and curves, but nothing remotely near something which helps content creators or programmers do their job. So with my musician we’re concentrating on two metrics; new audience numbers and stream numbers. Reach and engagement but with very, very specific goals.
So audience come from the client’s, activation strategy from the consultant and analytics determined by the client, sourced by the consultant. We’ll see over the coming months how that translates to even more downloads of his tunes.
