Ten Techniques for Developing Engaging Marketing Content

Every business needs to have an online presence and online marketing plan in place. Often, companies are on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. A company site may also have a blog or provide the viewer with the opportunity to sign up to their newsletter. All of these sites require fresh content to engage potential customers, empowering them to reach out and contact the business. No matter your company size, it is essential that your marketing strategy encourage new customers to contact your sales team, keep existing customers engaged in your company, and reach those at the very farthest end of your marketing funnel. However, it can be challenging to come up with engaging and exciting content. There are calendar events like holidays and awareness days for which your marketing team can always provide fresh content. But, what about the many days in between?

Ten Strategies for Creating Engaging Content

Developing excellent content is a great first step when it comes to assembling posts for your marketing calendar. Your goal is to promote engagement among your existing and potential customers as you post on social media and your website. Here are ten ways to help you develop content and stir up ideas for new, engaging posts:

Set your Google Alerts

If you’ve ever seen a post that seems almost prescient by how newsworthy it is, you are likely seeing an instance of “newsjacking.” This is a brilliant strategy in which a marketing department keeps on top of their Google Alerts and know about the first moment something about their business becomes newsworthy. The best newsjacking is done by reading up on what, precisely, has become newsworthy, then consider ways in which the topic is not being covered and create content for those angles. In this way, experts from your company become the “go-to” for the breaking news story.

Check Twitter

Set up your trending hashtags so that you will see hashtags that most affect your business. Then just check Twitter once a day to see if anything jumps out at you. Another quick tip is to check the hashtag: #urgharo when you have a chance. It means a journalist is urgently looking for some help with a story. This can give you ideas for your own content, or it can get you a little free press by responding to the journalist. If you really enjoy Twitter, you can also follow people in your industry or who cover your industry to see if there’s a hole in the existing content which you are uniquely positioned to fill - or discover ways to add to the conversation.

Follow Facebook Groups

There are thousands of groups on Facebook that have to do with everything from memes to motherhood to software development to garage sales. With this many discussion going on, you will undoubtedly find a few groups that apply to your industry. Sign up to these groups and read the ongoing conversations. You will likely discover questions, needs, and news articles for which you can craft responses. As a note, many groups forbid sales, so this would mainly be a fact-finding activity.

Ask Your Customers

Existing clients may have questions and comments about your products or services which inspire a blog post, Facebook video, or Instagram boomerang. You can even ask customers to help you develop a new hashtag for your company in a fun contest - which is content in itself.

Look at Content You’ve Already Created

You may be surprised to realize that you have already created content. You have likely talked to customers over email, sharing tips and strategies there. You may have also published a white paper or some press releases. Take note of shareable content from these sources.

Think About Peripheral Fields

You likely have a wider field of knowledge than just your industry. For example, perhaps part of the company culture is a passion for playing ping pong or enjoying local cuisine. These can be shared within the sphere of social media. Company photos, slow-motion video of a ping pong game, and more make great posts.

Follow Journalists that Cover Your Industry

Even if your industry is obscure, there are publications which cover it. Use social media to follow these publications along with the journalists that cover your industry to find content to share and become inspired with new ideas while reading up on current industry news.

Look at Your FAQs

Your business already has FAQs created. Take a look at them and consider fresh ways of answering these questions. You can also ask your salespeople, engineers, and product developers for additional common questions as well as peripheral questions that come up.

Follow Peripheral and Complimentary Industries

Think about which industries compliment your own, or which use your products and follow them on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Check out their websites and sign up to their newsletters. All of this information will provide you with new content ideas and may inspire you to team up with another company for giveaways, photo ops, and more.

Search Your Product or Company Name

Search your product or company on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You may be surprised to see how people are using your products, what they have to say about your services, and more. Not only will this help you discover new ways to frame your content, but you may also find ways to work with one or two of your strongest customer advocates. Now that you have great content ideas, it’s important to create the content and then frame when and where this content should be published. If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level, contact the Business Success Consulting Group. We work with you to organize and execute the right marketing strategy for your business.