Page 113 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

There’s simply too much content and the content is so great it’s hard for
anything to rise.

“The strategy I took to reach a new audience was to go beyond my walled
garden—the framework of the blog, my podcast, the social channels like
Facebook and Twitter—and start writing in other channels. Huffington Post.
INC Magazine. Harvard Business Review. A book.

“What I quickly realized is that by taking quality content and making it work
for another platform—and a relevant new audience—I was driving attention
back to my home site and content, and ultimately the work that we are doing at
our agency. The results to me were astounding. It showed up in the analytics, but
it also brought a new energy and enthusiasm to the audience who was
consuming my content. I realized that I can’t keep all of my content in one place.
I need to get in the hands of people wherever they are.

“I look at a lot of content that brands are producing and it’s fantastic,” Joel
continued. “And I often wonder why they would not embark on the same kind of
strategy. I think if they could tweak that content and submit it to other channels
—authentically, not some part of a PR spin—they could build audiences on
other major platforms they would not normally access. That would be
profoundly powerful. I think this will happen—brands not necessarily paying to
spread their content, but creating work so excellent that it is eagerly picked up
and shared by mainstream media.”

This type of earned media—validation by powerful third party sites—is the
most important and effective method to market your content, attract relevant new
audience members, and build credibility as a content creator. Anything a brand
or marketer says is immediately suspect, but amplification from trusted third
parties is a valuable win for content ignition with potentially far-reaching
impacts.

Let’s break this type of distribution down into some actionable ideas:

1. Plan for multi-channel content.
As Mitch Joel states, a look outside the “walled garden” can produce astounding
benefits. To start, identify the goals for your content, the intended audience, and
topics that might appeal to that audience. Discover where your readers live
online and find out which sites and social channels they use to find similar
content and news.
Increasingly, this research is something that can be automated, and even
quantified, through social analytics platforms. After you’ve identified
possibilities, focus on one or two target media channels. This could be an online
magazine, trade publication, business periodical, podcast, blog, or traditional