Content Marketing Made Simple

4 Essential Content Marketing Tips For Start Ups

As a start-up, you want your company to make a splash in the marketplace. You want the equivalent of a ticker tape parade, complete with an all-star marching band and giant balloon floats. (Who doesn't love giant balloon floats? And costumed characters tossing candy to spectators?) Content marketing can help you get that kind of attention from prospective customers and the media.

Here are four tips to help you do it right:

1. Integrate PR with content marketing. Public relations is about much more than press releases and press junkets. Your content can align neatly with your PR efforts, creating opportunities to partner with the media. Some examples are:

• Editorial calendars, where you spend time focusing on one aspect of your product or service and align it to your target media's editorial calendars;
• Thought leadership pieces, which involve contributing articles to third-party publications (ghost writers can help with this); and 
• Building community through social media, which helps your content - from infographics to videos and blog posts - go viral. It also helps you build relationships, which is the core of public relations.

2. Write a better blog. Instead of the usual tired corporate blog, write a better one. Fill it with useful content for your readers, and publish often. Promote your posts through social media, like Facebook and Twitter, and use plenty of graphics and photographs. Add in infographics and pin them to Pinterest, and share videos on YouTube. Create an editorial calendar for your blog, and sprinkle in posts that tie in to current trends and events. Scour industry reports. Mix it up, and you'll blog will get found, read, and linked to repeatedly.

3. Think beyond the blog. P&G Productions, an arm of household stalwart Proctor & Gamble, has been content marketing ever since radio hit the airwaves. Their most recent effort was the "Man of the House" series, which provides helpful tips for today's man on things like cooking, parenting, and generally pleasing women, aimed at the modern man who pitches in with the housework and child care. They're useful, they establish Proctor and Gamble as a trustworthy brand, and they also sell Gilette razors, Tag body spray, and Head & Shoulders shampoo (because women like their men to have smooth skin, smell nice, and be flake-free).

4. Create value-added content. By all means, have a blog. I'm not going to say that you should stop writing one. Today, it's a given that companies have a blog, particularly B2C companies. But they can also create content outside of the blog. What could your target market use? A video series detailing quick and healthy weeknight meals? Tips on making the most out of your time at the gym? Advice on kitten care? Probe deep into your customer's psyche - what does he or she really want? How can you make that happen? Then create content, whether it's a video series, a tip sheet, or an e-book, that shows your prospect a solution.

The more content you amass before you hit the water, the bigger the splash you'll make.