Marketing your products & services with beneficial content is the new age marketing method. Like many other countries it’s gaining ground with SME’s in Singapore making marketing more pleasurable rather than annoying with cold calls and disruptive advertisements.
But like all good things, succeeding in Content Marketing is not as easy. After producing useful content, not everyone is able to take full advantage of it. So, let me touch upon an often overlooked but yet powerful strategy called COPE that can underpin your Content Marketing efforts.
What is COPE and Why adopt it?
Wondering that this 4 letter acronym is all about?….its simple…Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE). The underlying principle of COPE is to do more with less.
To win in the Content Marketing game, marketers and business owners have to come out with unique and killer content. Content that can be appreciated by prospective customers – this content needs to be educative, informative, problem-solving, entertaining and also well-presented in order to be read and shared. Obviously, producing such stuff takes good amount of time, effort and resources.
But after you’ve produced quality content, how do you make the most out of it?…its by making it reach a large audience. That has become a critical factor in any Content Marketing Strategy. In fact, I’d go to the extent to say that Content Distribution & Promotion is equal to or more important than producing the Content itself.
Why? consider this…. according to usage statistics there are 2 million blogs published everyday, if blogging is part of your content strategy how would you ensure that your content gets read in such kind of information overload ?! While producing good content is the first and basic step, that content needs to be amplified using the right marketing channels to your targeted audience.
So, after creating, do ensure you have an elaborate plan to publish and promote your content.
Where to COPE – channels for amplification
The next question that automatically comes to the mind is…Well, where should I publish and promote? For common forms on content such Blogs Posts, articles and infographics, here are some options –
Social Media Groups and Communities
Broadcast your content in Social Media groups, communities where you are active and contributing. Today, one cannot afford to ignore platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn which have billions of active users every moment. Hashtag and tweet about your post to yours followers…if your content is of value it’ll surely get re-tweeted and shared.
And of course then there are ample of paid promotion options like Sponsored Articles, Boost Posts, etc that can help to propel your content far and beyond.
Subscriber List
Should you have an active email list of customer and subscribers, then that’s another avenue to publish and amplify your message.
One to One outreach
Reaching out to influencers, webmasters of popular websites or bloggers with heft should be a must-try. If you can convince them to share your value proposition, then it can really give legs to your content!
Forums and Comments
Let people know about your content on popular forums and hangouts where your target audience and buyer personas visit. For e.g. if your post is about how to get the best deal for a used car then a forum of car enthusiasts would be the ideal place to go an announce about your content.
Last but not least, make sure that your content is sharable. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content with Social Sharing buttons.
How to COPE – Tools and Services
After having identified what and where to publish, it then comes down to how best to do it efficiently. Yes, it can get quite overwhelming to reach out and publish on every available channel and avenue. So, here are a few ideas on how to automate and outsource some of the grunt work associated with publishing –
Have your content hosted on a CMS
It’s best to host your painfully created content on Owned Media. This strengthens your online presence, gives better manageability and also underpins your website’s SEO. Today CMS (Content Management Systems) based websites are a norm and these provide the ideal platform to host and manage content.
Leverage Social Media Management Tools
Social Media Management Tools like such as HootSuite and SproutSocial provide social network integration from popular CMS platforms. These tools allow you to schedule and submit your message to a variety of social media platforms. A single Dashboard interface gives you a complete view and analysis of your Content’s social media engagement.
Content Syndication Services
These are paid services that can help put your content on well-known sites. For the uninitiated, these are the contents ads you see on popular sites like Forbes and CNN probably under a section of “Related Posts” at the bottom.
Service providers like Outbrain and SimpleReach can help your content get a wide reach if you can afford their services.
Concluding
While you apply COPE to your Content Strategy be cognizant of the key steps in Content Marketing – Creation, Optimizing, Promoting and Analyzing. For e.g. After a Blog Post is published on your website, the subsequent workflow should include
- Posting the overview & link on your Social Media Business/Fan pages
- Including the post in your weekly Newsletter to subscribers
- Outreach to influencers and partners for sharing your content
- Perhaps Paid PR and Content Syndications on the web
- Analytics and reporting to measure performance
Content Marketing doesn’t stop at creation and hosting it on your website, and end-to-end strategy is imperative to succeed.
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