Five Content Strategies for High-Tech Businesses to Implement Now
By Cara Sloman, Chief Executive Officer
A friend once complained about how hard it is to read a newspaper. He said it was made of large, flimsy sheets of paper that were unwieldy, and it took more time and effort to find the information he wanted.
This seemed like a weak argument at the time, but in light of today’s scrollable news feeds that you can hold in one hand, it makes more sense. With the emergence of mobile computing and social media, people want instant access to shorter chunks of information that can be consumed whenever and wherever it’s convenient.
In light of this shift, the ability to tell the right story to the right audience and know how to write compelling content for a variety of audiences is essential. As with any communications campaign, it’s the business objectives that reign supreme, whether by driving website traffic, increasing engagement with audience segments or even pushing leads into the sales funnel.
With this goal in mind, we offer five best practices that we have used to successfully position clients for greater exposure in today’s competitive technology media landscape.
- Create Engaging Video – More than 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and almost 5 billion videos are watched every day. Facebook sees 100 million hours of video watch time daily. Businesses have an opportunity to connect with customers and prospects using live or produced video on their website, social media and video portals including Instagram, Vimeo and even SnapChat.
- Connecting on the Fly – Businesses and influencers can engage with audiences in real time thanks to live streaming and the ability to push live updates or notifications. Shape your content to match your audience’s interests while incorporating comments and opinions to build a sense of community.
- Omnichannel Your Content – People are hungry for content on every channel, so we take advantage of every opportunity to differentiate, lead and offer maximum value. Rather than re-inventing the wheel each time, one article or white paper can be repurposed in a multitude of ways to great effect. Share infographics based on statistics from the white paper on social media. Use a section for a blog post. Tweet key findings or though-provoking opinions. This produces consistent messaging in formats that are compelling for each channel.
- Track Referral Traffic – There are many options today to incorporate traceable links into your media posts to analyze website traffic sources. This extra step helps determine whether you are reaching the audience you’re aiming for and what types of publications and content are resonating. Our best practices include embedding traceable links into blogs, social media posts, press releases and other digital content and integrating Google Analytics.
- Diversify Your Efforts – Brand awareness comes from a mix of owned, earned and paid media. So, continue to produce great content for your website and your social channels, but include paid content, advertising and earned media like product reviews by influencers and features in established publications. Our most impactful campaigns use a combination of these content types to maximize reach and yield the strongest results.
There are more channels than ever before to get your message out to a variety of audiences. The five actions noted above can serve as a great starting point to set you on the path to greater brand recognition and the fulfillment of your business goals.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed at the thought of all the work this entails, but you don’t have to go it alone, and you don’t have to start from scratch each time.