Build your brand & loyalty via content marketing

When I checked reference and bestselling books of 2008-2009 about social media, public relations, branding and marketing I noticed some commonalities:

• Brands were urged to share their content on the appropriate social media channels;
• Brands were encouraged to give power to their consumers by ratings and social comments;
• There was LITTLE or NO mention of content marketing as a term, yet content marketing as a practice was hinted at.

The foundational messages for marketing and spreading the word about brands are still around today. Yet, the processes and the channels themselves in general have changed. According to the book PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools New Audiences written in 2008 by @dbreakenridge Deirdre Breakenridge, creating content in an open-source forum is one of the great accomplishments of the Web 2.0 platform. This sentence definitely has the scent of content marketing — before the term was widely used years ago.

This ‘open-source’ form of communication allows you the consumer or professional the perfect avenue to like or comment on a product or service. There is more content today –on everything; we are on content overload, but we are more informed, powerful and enabled consumers than ever before. Also in many cases (and in theory) the transparency of the open communication and open market can mean higher-quality products or services, based on demand and critique. As a company, this transparency and commitment to quality and your communication of it may take more time, but will pay huge dividends later.

So take the advice planted years ago that’s still relevant:

• Open your communication;
• Build and spread your brand’s (newsworthy or topical) content to your consumers or clients via posts and public relations (releases and stories);
• Make sure you have the strategy to spread this gospel.

If you don’t have a content strategy and/or content/PR strategy, you are likely posting random brand information without a purpose. For success you need purposeful content to build brand loyalty and/or business leads.