Creating a Personal Touch in Your Content Marketing

We are bombarded by hundreds of messages every day—mobile ads, billboards, TV and radio commercials, and don’t forget online marketing. So, when it comes time for you, as a creative content marketer, to sit down and come up with the next great content marketing piece, you know you have your work cut out for you.

With so many people, from bloggers to journalist to companies, publishing content it’s easy to forget the personal side to content marketing. The side that helps your business blog turns readers into loyal consumers. Clay Morgan recently pointed out the need for putting a personal touch on your marketing efforts in order to stand out in his article on Spin Sucks. Here’s a list of five ways to put that personal touch back into your content.

Know your audience. Joe Pulizzi from the Content Marketing Institute shares his belief that there are three types of audiences for content marketers to reach: Seekers, Amplifiers and Joiners. Companies should design their content to match the age, social class and interest of the group they are trying to reach. They should also experiment with how much interaction their audience likes. Do they prefer newsletters or a tweet? Finding out what kind of interaction works with all your different audience types will help you better add a personal touch.

Put a face to your content. Most companies prefer to keep the company image non-specific, but that could hurt their branding by not putting a face with the company, especially for their blog. For example, Spin Sucks has Gini Dietrich who personally tweets and comments back to readers. WebpageFX has Bill Craig. You’ll notice both of these companies have set up their authorship so that person’s picture shows up next to their listing in the search results.

Go with current events. Being in “real time” is important in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world. You could make a creative remark on social media about something currently in the news, like what Oreo did during the Super Bowl. You can also publish an article or graphic regarding the current event on your blog like Clarity Way did a few months back when Lady Gaga came out with her statement about the 27 Club.

Let the content answer a question or controversial topic. One of your main goals is to create a conversation piece. The more your readers talks about your piece, the more they are being driven to talk about you and your company. Pick a hot topic and take a stance with your piece (just be sure it won’t compromise your company and get them into trouble).

Interact with your audience on social media. Besides always commenting back to those who reach out to you on your blog, social media is a great place to extend that personal touch. You can even add a hashtag to your content if you think it will benefit the social conversation. Most importantly, just take time to respond and show your audience you are paying attention to them.

Following these five tips will allow you to better control how your message comes across to the audiences who see so many in a day. By personalizing their experience with you, you’ll create more than just content, you’ll create positive interactions that will boost your traffic and keep them coming back for more.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1iRbQI4