Page 116 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

can be a goldmine, if they’re the right 50 people who could become Alpha
Audience fanatics.

For example, one management consultant in Philadelphia is tapping into
small professional LinkedIn Groups like “Philadelphia Accountants” and “Philly
HR Professionals” to connect his content to relevant people in his sales area. If
more than a few people are interested in your niche, chances are there’s an
online community out there dedicated to it. When you find these communities,
don’t just spam your article and leave. Engage with people and build a reputation
as an authority within your space that will attract new Alphas.

8. Form content partnerships.
If your content pipeline is constrained, consider partnering with another pipeline.
This technique is commonly called brandscaping. For example, the insurance
company Geico ran a series of commercials featuring icons from other
companies, like the Pillsbury Doughboy. This strategy makes Geico appealing to
Pillsbury fans as well as its own.

9. Look for opportunities for newsjacking.
A term coined by David Meerman Scott, newsjacking describes a process to
align your brand message with breaking news events so you ride a wave of
traditional media coverage. A few years ago, when the Catholic Church was
about to name a new pope, Notre Dame University informed all the major news
outlets that it would have expert commentators standing by when the news
broke. When white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel, the Notre Dame
experts showed up on every major new channel.

Real time marketing can drive conversions and sales, says Scott. When
MultiCare Health System1 identified a trending topic, eclampsia, during an
emotional episode of the hit TV series “Downton Abbey,” the healthcare network
published a blog post about the condition within hours of the episode’s airdate.
MultiCare Health saw over 1,000 page views, with people spending an average
of five minutes on the page. They also received 30 click-throughs to their online
appointment system.

10. Use Facebook as a distribution channel.
It’s popular to bash Facebook but the channel’s inevitable world dominance also
means it’s a marketing channel you can’t ignore. Despite the premature
predictions of the channel’s demise, it continues to be a wildly popular social
network across many demographics throughout most of the world. One study
showed that 74 percent of all marketers name Facebook as the most important