The Template: A Content Marketing Secret

Peter Yorke is one of India's top content marketers.  In this interview he reveals how content marketing tools and templates can guide staff, save time and help clients.

 I have known Peter for years and always look to him for great insights into creating great communications.

(Sorry about the sound quality.  There were some Skype issues during our conversation)

See Peter's views on when you should outsource your content marketing.  

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4 Reasons To Outsource Content Creation

Peter Yorke is among India's most experienced communicators

Content marketing may be new to Australia but elsewhere it is more established. Take India for example.

My friend Peter Yorke runs a very successful content marketing agency in Bangalore India.  We recently spoke about why a company might want outside help to implement a content management strategy.  

Peter has been helping Indian B2B companies - mainly in the tech space - develop and share content with customers and others. He has been doing this for nearly five years and has come the conclusion that outsourcing content creation and strategy carries distinct benefits.

• Firstly, outsourcing provides flexibility.  It lets companies scale their content creation activity up or down depending on their budget or what's happening operationally. And  it can provide the surge capacity if serendipity delivers an opportunity too good to miss.

• Contracting content creation guarantees customer service levels.  You're paying for a content asset (piece of work) tailored specifically for your audience.  Being a commercial arrangement you can be confident it  will come in on time and within budget, making things more predictable than relying on internal staff who, let's be honest, are often diverted off to other priorities.

•  An outside agency brings a fresh set of eyes to your operations.  They can spot a good case study for online publication or turn up a story to round out a speech although it's been sitting under the noses of staff for some time.

And finally, Peter points out that content marketing is still so new, CEOs just may not have the in-house talent to start up a content marketing strategy. 

What do you think?  If content marketing is all about relationships should you keep it firmly in-house? 

Listen to how Peter uses content marketing templates to guide staff and help clients. 

If Content Marketing Was A Train ....

Stop, go, pause.  Stop, go, pause.

Traditional marketing and most PR moves from one campaign to the next. You plan, implement, await  results, adjust and then start over again. Traditional approaches are like a milk train chugging from point to point, stopping at all stations along the way.  It is slow and steady and with with a lot of stops and station masters along the way putting themselves  between you and your customers.

On the other hand content marketing is like a hi-speed inter-city locomotive. You hop on and you're there for the journey.  The crew and passengers are together until they safely reach their destination and during their travels get to understand and appreciate each other. 

Related post:  Content marketing: why now?

  

Build Stories

The Building of Stories from Big Fish Presentations

This presentation is a wonderful guide to the elements and suspense of storytelling and how a good story can inspire us to act and move forward.

It is worth a read.  Well done to my friends at Big Fish Presentations.  

Click the full screen button for best reading. 

Content Marketing: Why Now?

"Content is information others find useful or entertaining or both.  

 It is not necessarily what you want to tell people.  It is what they want or need to hear.  Content marketing is about providing that type of information on an enduring basis." 

The term ‘content marketing’ may have recently landed in Australia but the practice of content marketing has been with us for a very long time. 

Down the centuries people have always shared their content.  It could be in the form of knowledge and awareness of the world around them, transferring skills, warning others of danger and or just passing along useful facts, figures and opinions.  

Today the demand for helpful content, from reliable sources, is the greatest at anytime in history. That is because personal and corporate communications are changing fast, our lives are busier than ever and we are increasingly selective in choosing who we listen to.  
  

• Families are time-poor. Too many people want our attention and we would be simply overwhelmed if we surrendered to their demands.

• Since 2003, social media has accelerated the pace and rate of communications change.  Social media has an insatiable appetite for information and gives us a channel for direct and very personal information.  It also gifts us each of us with a publishing platform and a filtering system.  We now have numerous options to receive and share information, anytime, anywhere, any place.  And we can easily block out information from those we distrust, don't now or who hold different interests or attitudes.

•  Recent Australian research shows we are skeptical about what we hear. We mistrust brands, business, government and other traditional sources of information.  (2013 Edelman Trust Barometer for Australia.) and operate on the basis that no organisation has the right to be heard.

• Traditional media used to be the dominant communications channel for most of us.  Now it is fragmenting and as it searches for new business models, it is becoming one more way - not the only way - to connect people with similar opinions, behaviours or needs.                                                       

So it is time for a different PR approach if we want to find, produce and share the type of information that will connect us to our customers, clients or fellow citizens.  

Enter content marketing, an evolution of old-style marketing.  It is a system that is gaining traction in the US and now emerging in Australia.

The Key Message Is Dead: Hail Content Marketing

There is fat chance anyone is listening to your carefully crafted,

committee approved, centrally delivered key messages.  

A friend recently asked me "isn't content marketing what we've always done?"

In a way she's right.  Communicators have long practiced elements of content marketing -  messaging, knowing audiences, distributing information etc.   The difference now is social media,the mega paradigm-buster.

Social media has accelerated information delivery to breakneck speed. Everyone potentially has a publishing platform for their opinions, and all of us can precisely choose what information we let into our lives and what we block.

No one is dependent on what you say.  We are outrageously spoiled for choice when it comes to information and we can choose where we get it, when and how.

Let's say your company, not for profit or agency tells me something.  Instantly I can go online to check its accuracy or access a staggering volume of contending data, commentary or analysis.  Many hierarchical organisations particularly government bodies still find it difficult to accept that the logo on your letterhead adds little authority to their arguments. 

You can longer claim sole expertise based on who you are.  Google has made all of us experts ... or at least let us think we are.

There is a fundamental difference between old style PR and content marketing.  And it is this: unless we are prepared to provide audiences with information that is helpful, entertaining or both, we stand little chance of connecting with, let alone persuading them. 

The era of the one-way key message blasted from the hierarchical bunker is dead.  Perhaps it served us well in the past.  But today people want dialogue not monologue.  There is fat chance anyone is listening to your carefully crafted, committee approved, centrally delivered key messages.  

Listening, continuously offering valuable insights helping those we need to reach, shared conversation and letting others own your topic hold today's keys to successfully reaching customers, clients and citizens. 

How To Succeed In Change Management

Change Management from Bob Crawshaw

Changing behaviour in organisations is one of the toughest challenges communicators face. IABC Canberra presenter Tina Chawner recently offered insights on the subject based on her UK experiences.

6 Smarter Ways to Market in a Flat Economy

Baer spoke on content marketing in Sydney

At the recent Content Marketing World Conference US author Jay Baer unpacked his concept of Youtility: marketing so helpful customers would be willing to pay for it.   

And Youtility is what can make you stand out in a flat economy.  Particularly when people have limited money, short attention spans, an overabundance of information and are spoiled for choice. 

It used to be salespeople provided information then closed the sale with customers relying on them for product knowledge.  Now their job is to close the sale with savvy customers armed with online research and willing to move on if they feel something is not right.   

The role of the marketer is also transitioning - from hyping products to helping customers - offering accessible and timely information that will help their customers make decisions and become brand loyalists.

Jay outlined six steps to build a content marketing strategy to set you apart in a tight economy:

• Discover customer needs through market research, keyword search, social chatter etc.
• Map those needs to a specific service or product your organisation has.
• Develop user-friendly information around that product through case studies, tools, tips, apps, videos and other devices.
• Distribute and then market that content through the channels where your customers live.
• Skill your staff to continually come up with information to help customers.

Most importantly recognise that helping customers is a process not a program and marketing today is a marathon not a sprint.  

Other posts:

The age of content is new again 

Four ways to drive content marketing