Page 73 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

Content’s role in this new human digital culture is to provide the
opportunities—the consistent provocations—to ignite those relational sparks. By
providing a drip, drip, drip of communications, you let people know you’re
there, you care, you’re working on something new, and you’re solving problems.
Through audience-centric messaging you can solve customer problems through
your content and immediately establish credibility through your empathy,
responsiveness, and authentic helpfulness.

The more the audience engages with your content, the better the chance for a
deepening relationship beyond the weak link, perhaps someday blossoming into
a two-way relationship … maybe even a relationship based on loyalty and trust.

Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at those moments that
influence purchasing behavior. Social media is the perfect tool for achieving that
goal: It’s the only form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every
stage in the buying process, from when they’re comparing products right through
to the period after a purchase. And ultimately their experience with a brand and
potential advocacy influences others.

A recent study from Edison Research5 showed that 57 percent of American
social media users follow a brand on Facebook for no other reason than they
have an affinity for the company. And that affinity can create powerful results.
The study also shows that one-third of social media users purchase more from a
brand after they begin to follow them on a social media account.

A study commissioned by Google6 characterizes the Alpha Audience as the
“rapt audience” and says that those who actually engage with brand content have
even stronger buying behaviors:

People who engaged with a brand on social media on a daily basis
were likely to make twice as many purchases from that brand than
someone who engages only monthly. However, socially engaged
customers’ value to brands goes well beyond purchase. By acting as
advocates, these consumers help build brands.

Think of these engaged consumers as your brand advocates. They
want to know more about what you have to offer and will champion,
broadcast, or amplify on your behalf. In fact, they can significantly
increase engagement rates in social media. A brand’s advocates
account for a significant amount of its earned media: Brands with
high advocate populations generate up to 264% more earned
media impressions per campaign than brands with fewer
advocates.